Author: Ralph E. Carter
Date: 16:23:40 08/24/98
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One reason the Pentium MMX is much better than the Pentium, even when the MMX instructions aren't involved, is its "level 1 cache", which is twice as big. Similarly, the K6-2 has a level 1 cache that is twice as big as that of the PII. Although there are other factors slightly in favor of PII, this bigger L1 cache probably more than offsets them. The difference is not reflected in conventional benchmarks. But chess programs provide a peculiarly severe test of this feature. It appears to be true that K6-2 is something like 10% faster than PII when running Rebel. Whether it is faster for any other chess program, I don't know. The difference is small enough, that optimizing for the PII could probably overcome it. It is said that Fritz 5 is optimized for PII. About upgradeability- don't worry about it. The K7, the PII Xeon, the Merced, and probably everything else, will fit neither Socket 7 nor Slot 1. I'm tired of this subject, because the difference is not enough to get excited about. For the difference in price, though, you could also buy a better monitor, or another 256 Megs of memory or ALL of the top chess programs!
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