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Subject: Re: Is the Duron similar to Thunderbird?

Author: stuart taylor

Date: 15:25:31 06/13/00

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On June 13, 2000 at 17:59:03, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>On June 13, 2000 at 17:27:45, Torstein Hall wrote:
>
>>On June 13, 2000 at 17:01:36, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>
>>>On June 13, 2000 at 15:55:24, Mogens Larsen wrote:
>>>
>>>>On June 13, 2000 at 15:41:51, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>No, Thunderbird is a few % faster than an Athlon at same MHz.
>>>>>
>>>>>Duron is exactly the same as Tbird, but with 1/4 the L2 cache (64k).
>>>>>
>>>>>-Tom
>>>>
>>>>I've just purchased an ordinary Athlon. What are the advantages and
>>>>disadvantages with a smaller cache size. BTW, are the L2 cache of the
>>>>Thunderbird and the Athlon fullspeed?
>>>>
>>>>Best wishes...
>>>>Mogens
>>>
>>>The Tbird and Duron both have on-die "full speed" L2 caches, but they are not
>>>that much faster than the old off-die caches. Most benchmark scores improve by a
>>>few percent, but nothing like when Intel moved the PIII cache on-die.
>>>
>>>The main benefit of the on-die cache is that it makes the processors much
>>>cheaper to manufacture. Another, less significant benefit is that the cache
>>>performance can now scale with the processor performance.
>>>
>>>-Tom
>>
>>Why was it so much more important for the PIII to get the cach on-die?
>
>Primarily because the PIII has a small L1 cache--16k or 32k, I can't remember
>which. But it relies heavily on the L2 cache, as opposed to the Athlon, which
>has a 128k L1 cache.
>
>Another thing is that Intel redesigned the PIII's L2 cache when they put it
>on-die, so the bandwidth is higher and the latencies are lower. AMD simply took
>their cache chips and splatted them on the processor die, so there's no reason
>for the on-die cache to be much better than the off-die cache.
>
>-Tom

Therefore, is a normal Athlon with 512k L2 off-die cache still better than
thunderbirds 256 on-die L2 cache? (if I got the numbers right). And overall
is it superior to intel at the momment?
S.Taylor



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