Memory performance (continued)
Here's a slightly indulgent look at memory access latencies in more detail. If the following intimidates you, just skip to the next page with the gaming results. Remember, though, to flip back here if the boss is looking over your shoulder.

I've colored the data series below according to how they correspond to different parts of the memory subsystem. Yellow is L1 cache, light orange is L2 cache, and orange is main memory. The red series, if present, represents L3 cache. Of course, caches sometimes overlap, so the colors are just an interesting visual guide.

I've whittled down the entrants here to one or two representatives from each CPU type in order to keep things manageable. Compare the first two graphs to see the difference between 1MB and 2MB of L2 cache.

The new P4 chips certainly have lots of cache, but the Athlon 64 still gets out to main memory very quickly courtesy of its onboard memory controller.