Confused about cache

[azonicbruce]

I'm looking to upgrade my PIII 450 mhz. It has the 256k L2 cache. I'm looking at the PIII 600 512k cache version. People selling it say the bigger cache it better (they say it's like having a 4-lane highway compared to a 2-lane) but on some of the posts I see people saying the "smaller" cache is faster. Am I reading something wrong? I'm not too familiar with how cache works so any quick overview might help.

I know there are better things I can upgrade to but I really don't want to get a new motherboard. I have an Asus P2B-F, AGP motherboard. From reading on their website they say the most I can upgrade to is a PIII 600mhz. Is this true? The bus frequency multiple can be set at 8.0 so that makes me think I can upgrade to 800mhz.

Any help would be appreciated.

------------------
You catch more flies with honey, than with a rifle!

[hiredgoonz]

The speed of the cache varies from chip to chip...you need to find out whether the cache of the chip is on-die or off-die and how fast it is...

For example, the new Athlons have 128K of on-die L1 cache which runs at full clock speed and 256K of on-die L2 cache which also runs at full clock speed, the original Athlons had 512K of L2 cache, but it was not on the processor die and only ran at a fraction of the clock speed, so even with more cache, it does not performa as well...

As far as an 800mhz chip, you need to do some research and find out what voltages your board supports and what voltage an 800 needs...it should work as long as the board can provide the correct voltage and you set your jumpers correctly...make sure you get the P3 with 100mhz bus though...


------------------
When all else fails, read the instructions.