1MB vs 2MB L2 Cache?

[Joe]

How does a system with a 1MB vs 2MB L2 Cache affect the normal user?
Normal in the sense of no gaming, hardly any picture editing and
mainly just burning a lot of images from the DVD/Video groups.

Are there any webpages which explain the difference for this question
and the one below?

While I'm at it, newer hard drives are coming out with 16MB caches
replacing the 8MB standard - What are the benefits of 8 more megs?

 

[Conor]

How does a system with a 1MB vs 2MB L2 Cache affect the normal user?
Normal in the sense of no gaming, hardly any picture editing and
mainly just burning a lot of images from the DVD/Video groups.

Not alot.

Are there any webpages which explain the difference for this question
and the one below?

Simple analogy:

Which is faster? Recalling something from memory or looking it up in a
book? In this case, the memory refers to the cache and the book refers
to the HDD or System RAM depending on whether you're looking at HDDs or
CPUs.

While I'm at it, newer hard drives are coming out with 16MB caches
replacing the 8MB standard - What are the benefits of 8 more megs?

More prefetch and repeatedly accessed data held in faster storage.

 

[dannysdailys]

This really has more to do with the processor making the righ
predictions then anything else. Predicitons? Yes, the cache i
filled with what the system thinks you'll need. If it's wrong, i
has to flush the buffer and start over again. Since this is th
case, I really can't tell you if one is better then the other. Bu
the rule of thumb is; more cache/ memory is always better

The hard drive is a different matter however. Where the hard driv
cache comes into play is mainly on boot up. It will take the comman
files of your normal startup programs, cache them, and dump them t
the processor bus. This will give you performance you really don'
have. I'd like to see about a gig of cache on the drives

New products are coming out however, and one is a 4 gig card that wil
cache the hard drive for you and keep it in memory. They claim a
second boot with that setup

 

[fj]

How does a system with a 1MB vs 2MB L2 Cache affect the normal user?
Normal in the sense of no gaming, hardly any picture editing and
mainly just burning a lot of images from the DVD/Video groups.

As a user, you don't need to worry about size of L2 cache - or any other
aspect of the CPU. It all comes down to actual performance. You can use
the CPU charts at Tom's Hardware to compare performance among CPU's.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/index.html