Processor

[takeflight21121]

550 or 650? my friend's telling me the 2 megs of l2 cache makes it slower

[JustAnEngineer]

I suggest the one that will fit in socket-939.

[LicketySplit]

650 would be my choice of the two. Go with JAE's advice

[Hance]

the 650 should be slightly faster than the 550 . are you set on getting an intel processor ? if not we need to talk Socket 939

[Flying Fox]

If they are the same GHz, why would more cache makes it slower? What's your friend smoking?

[takeflight21121]

well he smokes pot, and uhh i have a 775 board and system already, just wanna swap out... and replace u know, haha, not even sure if i'm going to get it, but... 400 megaherse more isn't that bad? i have a 630 already, i'm waiting for the M2 socket, for the next Athlon 64(overkill) yeah, by than i should have a **** of money saved up, but... it's that or a car, i might pick a car, but still i plan to make another rig, and sell it to my friend, with that 630(hehe)

[Flying Fox]

Save the cash. Too bad you are on a Dull so I don't know if you can get a real video card. That would help more.

[tfp]

Well Intel did double the cache from 1 to 2 meg but the latency on the 2 meg L2 is larger then it was on the 1 meg processors.

For some apps because of the latency difference the extra L2 doesn't really help

Thats what he is talking about.

[Usacomp2k3]

Yeah, I'd say that the difference over the 630 isn't appreciable enough to spend money on, but that's just me.

[JustAnEngineer]

Yeah, I'd say that the difference over the 630 isn't appreciable enough to spend money on, but that's just me.

No, it's not just you. If he's going to stay with the Pentium4, he needs at least a 20% boost in clock speed to have a perceptible effect on his computing experience. If gaming performance is his measure of success, he would get much more bang for his buck by upgrading his video card or by switching to a Socket-939 processor.