Benefits of L2 Cache?

[DigitalJ]

Well, I just ordered most of the components for my upgrade. Gigabyte K8NS, Seagate SATA 120GB hd, and a cheap 380W PSU that better [censored] work! All that's left is the CPU. Problem is that I'm REALLY poor.

So, my question is this: assuming that I won't be doing anything that's super intensive beyond a few mid range games, is the Sempron 64's meager 256mb of L2 cache going to cut into my permormance a whole lot?

My curent PC is quite literally on it's death bed, so I need to upgrade fast. Can anyone give me a reason why I shouldn't go with a $76 Sempron 64 2800+ over a $124 Athlon 64 2800+? At least temporarily?

Thanks for the help!

[hockey man]

If you look at Saphalline's sticky, he recommends the AMD Sempron 64 3000+ Palermo 800MHz FSB 128KB L2 Cache Socket 754 CPU as the buget choice. So that is what I would get.

[DigitalJ]

Dammit, I always forget about Saph's sticky. Thanks hockey dude.

[hockey man]

I love that sticky. For me it is always a starting point.

[saphalline]

For AMD's processors, L2 cache makes less of a difference than one might think. It can definitely affect performance, but not nearly as much as pure clock speed. Check out this THG article (http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050801/index.html) on the Sempron 64 for benchmarks and their take on it.

[DigitalJ]

Sweet. I ended up going with a 3100. Though nothing like the epic machines out there, this will be a significant upgrade for me. Woohoo!! Thanks for the help, guys.