will extra 512K cache improve gaming performance?

[imported_g33k]

Ahh yeah funny how jeff took my question out of thread context there. He makes it seem like I was directing the question at him, when I was asking Icopoli.

 

[Lithan]

He was answering your question with a little humor. THere is NO WAY you can get 2000pts in 2005 from a 350mhz CPU boost. Where you might get close to that, (provided you're also raising FSB and memory speeds) is 2001.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Lithan
He was answering your question with a little humor. THere is NO WAY you can get 2000pts in 2005 from a 350mhz CPU boost. Where you might get close to that, (provided you're also raising FSB and memory speeds) is 2001.

Wow... finally. It took how many days for someone to catch on? 😉

 

[tinyabs]

512Kb = 32768 cache lines (16b in a cache line)

Most of processing time are spend in loops and same lines of code, the code will need to jump to and get data from 32K locations to fully utilize 512Kb L2 cache. Video task process megabytes of data per second and reuse data often. So a large cache benefits.

 

[sbuckler]

As guy above hints it depends on the program. The older the game engine the more likely it is to actually not use that much memory for it's core processing and hence 512kb cache is plenty. As newer more memory intensive games come out they will make better use of the 1mb cache.