L2 cache or FSB...?

[stevebri]

Not being able to quite go to the dizzy heights of Swampy's next 'spaceship'... I ask the simple question of what will give me more RAW processing power.

A bigger L2 cache or 800mhz fsb...?

This is based on me filling the thing with as much fast ram as I can get...

Steve

[BadpicKev]

raw power is fsb. the l2 cache allows it to run smother and quicker.

[stevebri]

Thanks Kev,

So I'm better going for 800fsb with 512 L2 cache than 533fsb with 1mL2 cache.

Sounds like a plan.

Steve

[Swampy]

Yeah, no sense going with 2 generations back. 533 will be going away soon. You really don't want to buy anything more than 1 gen back, so 800mhz FSB is the way to go if you can't do the 1066.

[stevebri]

Have bought into the H1 system so must keep a lid on everything else for a little while.

I currently have an AMD XP2500+ on an ok board with 1.5gb of DDR3200 ram.

I picked up a good 478 Pentium 4 asus board and I'm sure sticking a 3.0 or more chip in that will give me significant RAW processing speed.

Steve

The H1 is superb BTW, for me the best camera I have ever used, now, if Fuji pull their finger out and get a 22mp chip out there.....

[Blade]

Hi,

Front Side Bus Explained

Initially, the Pentium 4 line of processors were introduced with a 100MHz FSB and 400MHz System Bus. The 400MHz comes from the "quad pumped" data transfer rates which mean the data can be sent 4x per clock cycle, which in turn effectively makes the transfer rates as fast as 400MHz.

Additionally, a "quad pumped" FSB of 133 will give you 533MHz as we have seen with the "B" model CPU's, and finally with the latest "C" model CPU, we have a 200/800MHz Bus.

Finally, what we hope to see here with the new "C" version CPU's with the 200MHz FSB is a higher level of performance while retaining a similar clock speed of previous processors, notably the 3.06B/533. On paper, the 800MHz FSB sounds great and your initial thoughts are that we will definitely see performance increases, but without proper implementation of this new specification we could see some serious bottlenecks.

Here is how Intel does it.

The 800MHz FSB will offer a minimum of 6.4GB/s of bandwidth. Currently, the technology for a memory interface that will support that does not exist, it's simply too fast.

So if we can't have faster memory, lets just widen the memory interface which will in turn increase overall bandwidth. With the new 865 and 875 chipsets Intel used the 64-bit DDR memory interface of the 845PE chipset, and added a second 64-bit channel in addition to adding DDR400 support (PC3200).

128-bit memory interface (64-bit x 2) with DDR400 gives us the 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth with is balanced with the 800MHz FSB.

Appreciate the need for sourcing the 'best (most affordable) hardware', but please also remember the quickest/easiest to install upgrade to give more raw power is without doubt RAM, especially when using editing/manipulating programs....

Windows XP uses at least 256mb before the needs of your software....
Kind Regards