Which of these two CPU's would you get?

I have a quick question about the significance of L2/L3 cache.

How big a deal is it to have 6MB of L2 instead of 3MB? For example, is it worth $200 for an upgrade from a Core 2 Duo E7600 3.06GHz w/ 3MB of L2 cache, to an E8600 Core 2 Duo 3.33GHz with 6MB L2 (twice as much). The E8600 also has 1333MHz DDR3 vs. the E7600's 1066MHz DDR3.

Which one would you get? Seeing how important it is to have enough "regular" RAM, I've often wondered as to how much of a difference L2 cache makes, and in more recent processors, L3 cache I suppose...?

Thanks very much!

 

If I were in your position I would spend the extra 200 dollars and you get faster ram faster fsb and more l2 cache witch can make a difference when running intensive applications, and while just doing everyday tasks.

 

I would spend the money for L2/L3 cache size. When I consider a mobile CPU the importance is in the following order:

TDP > L2/L3 cache size > frequency

However for Core 2 Duo it's no longer worth the money. Save it and buy Core i7.

 

Maybe the desktop people will know more. Try the sister site dtr.com

 

Agreed. Stop wasting your money on a dead socket and go get yourself an LGA 1366 or 1156 board and CPU. You will not be disappointed.

Assuming you are talking about desktop CPU's of course, which your post implies.

E - Desktop
T/P - Notebook

If you really must buy an LGA 775 CPU, do yourself a favor and get a Q9650.

 

L2/L3 cache affect almost all application types. The more data that flow through the CPU, the more benefit it get.
Read this Anandtech article, page 2 & 3. It's talking about how cache & FSB affect the performance.

Although this is based on an old UT3 engine, but I'm sure it's still hold true for today application.

 

For $200, I would get an i5 750. 8mb of cache, and two extra physical cores.

 

6 MB vs. 3MB cache gives about 8% boost in CPU intensive tasks.

Let me know if you need the link.

 

extra cache always helps and seriously , get a 1156 or 1366 socket CPU.. core 2 is now officially obsolete..

 

Great info. Thanks everyone!

Two quick follow-up's:

In general, getting a quad-core i5 vs. a quad i7, assuming similar specs for cache and frequency, so I suppose that means a higher-end quad i5 vs. a lower-end i7?), is there any add'l benefit to getting an i7 besides bragging rights, or is that mostly marketing?

Second, I am considering an iMac for my girl. She's been wanting one for a little while and her birthday is coming up. The current line of the 21.5" models does limit me specifically to the E7600 (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 3MB L2 1066MHz), or the E8600 (Core 2 Duo 3.33GHz 6MB L2 1333MHz). I'm already going to have the 1TB 7200rpm drive swapped out in favor of a solid state drive (SSD) and hook that baby up externally. In that scenario, how much of a performance boost would she really experience? She does do quite a bit of multi-tasking and likes to run 720p and 1080p Bluray's. (that was a leading question, wasn't it? lol).

Maybe the question would be better expressed as to how much of a performance loss would she incur if I went with the lower-end E7600, which has 3MB L2 vs. 6MB L2, along with the lower FSB, as well as 267MHz less CPU clock.

Sorry for the 20 questions. Inquiring minds want to know.

Thanks again for the many detailed answers.

 

Marketing. Performance difference is very little for majority of tasks and even the "slower" CPU can handle multitasking very well as well as playing Blu-Rays.

 

First, there is no such thing is such thing as quad core i5 in the notebook market just desktop. But yes, I agree for the most part it's marketing except for one, quad core i5 do not have HT, while quad core i7 do. If you gonna need it to do lots of number crunching like transcoding I strongly advise to look for i7 instead. Performance lose I would expect it to be in between 5-15% diff at most for the cache difference. It's purely a guess. But the way I see it, most i5 can do pretty much all general stuff that most average users want to do w/o any problem. For watching something like bluray, I would atleast make sure it have dedicate GPU for that kinda of that.