p3 - p3 xeon I'm confused

[Dee67]

What's the difference between a regular P3 and a P3 Xeon?

I was looking at dual cpu systems and saw both listed, but no explaination (other than a higher price on xeon).

 

[Priit]

P3 Xeon (256Kb L2 cache version) is just P3 with Slot2 connector. I don't know if Intel made P3 Xeon's with larger L2...

 

[toph99]

the Xenon uses a Slot 2 interface(slot 1 on steroids) and is in a larger cartridge. it can have, afaik, from the standard 256kb L2, to 2mb of l2 cache. now as for any other tweaks, i'm not sure, but i know that they can run in quad cpu configurations as well, but thats the extent of my knowledge

 

[Dee67]

so then there's no difference in speed, reliability or anything like that?

 

[RoadRuner]

the p2-xeon also supports up to XX -way processing in most cases its 4-way.

I've got a box here, quad-p3-550 xeon with 2mb l2 cache on each. They sure do burn through some work!


But. When the coppermine came out, it was SMP, (no dual). The 256K Xeon on the other hand was 2-way SMP.

Now that the CB0 coppermines are out, the 256k cache xeon well is pointless.

 

[Sunny129]

no difference in CPU speed or cycles...but the fact that the Xeon's have 512 Kb to 2 Mb of L2 cache (forgive me if my numbers are off) gives them much more storage room in L2. so depending on how intensive the software you plan to run on the CPU, the Xeon will be slightly faster due to the fact that can retrieve instructions faster than a regular P3 since the chances that those instructions are sitting in the L2 cache are greater.

 

[Viperoni]

All Xeon's Cache run at the full CPU speed too, even the older p2 based ones.