Which cpu

[anikhtos]

i am between amd athlon II x4 615e and amd phenom II x4 910e
the first has a tdp of 45 watts and the second 65 watt.
THe diference between them is that phenom has a l3 cache were the athlon has none. the freguense betweeen them is 100hz more for the ohenom.
so my question is. how much impact has l3 cache to perfomance??
according to www.passmark.com
athlon scores 2970
phenom scores 3108
which is 4.6% more
athlon is 2,5gz phenom is 2,6gz thats 4% more hz
so according this penchmark tool l3 plays no real impact to perfomance
is that the case?
is there any application that l3 will play a role??
or go to athlon and save that 20 watt??
thank you

 

[dma0991]

It depends if the cost difference between the both of them are not that much. If the price difference is not big then the Phenom II is a better choice than the Athlon II.

 

[anikhtos]

It depends if the cost difference between the both of them are not that much. If the price difference is not big then the Phenom II is a better choice than the Athlon II.

Can you give more info why a phenom is better than an athlon??
and in this case the 20 more watt are justified by the increased perfomance?

 

[veri745]

If power is more important to you than performance, I would definitely get the Athlon II because you are correct, the L3 cache doesn't add tons of performance.

There are some cases where the L3 cache on the PhII help. You can view a clock-for-clock comparison of AII vs PhII on bench:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/85?vs=106

 

[fffblackmage]

Athlon II Or Phenom II: Does Your CPU Need L3 Cache?

 

[dma0991]

Can you give more info why a phenom is better than an athlon??
and in this case the 20 more watt are justified by the increased perfomance?

Here you can see that the Phenom II outperforms the Athlon II or something like veri745 posted. Like I said the performance is justified by the price or price/performance ratio. If the Phenom II is better than the Athlon II but it's price is significantly higher as well then it would reduce its price/performance ratio.

Don't buy a CPU because of cache size and TDP because TDP is only the maximum power draw of the CPU and it does not mean that 65W of TDP means you're going to draw a constant 65W. Depending on power saving features, you may be using much less than that on a frequent basis. Price/performance plays a bigger role here.