Originally posted by Bronco_II:
Interesting... I'll check those out. Can you or someone elaborate what the cache size does for performance? I'm a HUGE gamer and just want newest games to run fast and look pretty for at least a couple years, so which would be better for me, the faster processor or the bigger cache?
Here's as good an explanation as I could find for you on cache. Basically, think of it as the difference between going to get food from your refrigerator vs having to go down the street to the supermarket. The cache is right there next to the processor, vs. having to go back and forth to memory over the system bus.
What happens in general terms is this. The processor requests a piece of information. The first place it looks is in the level 1 cache, since it is the fastest. If it finds it there (called a hit on the cache), great; it uses it with no performance delay. If not, it's a miss and the level 2 cache is searched. If it finds it there (level 2 "hit"), it is able to carry on with relatively little delay. Otherwise, it must issue a request to read it from the system RAM. The system RAM may in turn either have the information available or have to get it from the still slower hard disk or optical drive.
If all you are concerned about is the gaming aspect of the PC, I'm not sure you are going to need much more than a desktop replacement laptop. If you anticipate needing the features of a true laptop (portability, battery life), then perhaps a Pentium M machine is the way to go. Sounds like the only consideration on a true laptop is the availability of a higher end graphics card.
Jim H
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