I took a look at their arguments.

The extra cache really comes into play at higher clock speeds.

I usually think of it as a table. You work on the table, and your cache is the table-space. RAM is the drawers, and HDDs are the cabinets in the corner.

Now, if you're only working fast enough to go through a document an hour, you don't need as much desk space as a person who goes through 10.

Back to computers, if you've clocked your CPUs at 3ghz (which they should be able to do easily on the Freezer7 in an SFF case, on an mATX mobo), the FPS differences would increase exponentially. your 4-7fps difference can suddenly become 20-35fps difference.

But also to their defence, although nothing is mentioned on how to benchmarks were obtained (what graphics card particularly), having a lower end graphics card will minimise the difference between CPUs, as its usually the graphics card that will bottleneck the system.


However, if you children are budding engineers, and use CAD alot, you can't afford not to have the extra cache



edit: Also, I must point out that most posters out there are justifying their views, instead of looking at it both ways. Most of us do this, even me (although I do try not to). One other thing they totally miss is the overclocking potential, which will show that the E6xxx will totally blow away the E21xx when both are overclocked to its maximum potential. The only use comparing caches at the same speed would be for those people who aren't going to overclock.