A couple of percent, I'd say.

The San Diego core also includes SSE3 instructions and some memory tweaks, but from what I've read, it wouldn't be much different from your current CPU.

If you wouldn't lose money, then by all means, go for it

 

keep in mind that the 180nm newcastle is among the lesser of a64s these days, so a 90nm, winchester, venice, or san deigo would be better (especially for overclocking).

 

Wouldn't that be 130nm ?

 

Well

Basically im looking for the added benefits of a 1mb cache, ya know a A64 4000 without the $500 price tag......If I oc the 3700 to 2.4 in theory thats what id have.....

 

yes it would, apparently i made a typo. nevertheless, any modern 90nm a64 can usually be overclocked pretty well. so yes, a 90nm a64 3700+ could be overclocked to achieve 4000+ performance, but there's no gurantee it will work, or that your hardware won't be damaged.

it wouldn't be a major leap, but would hold an advantage over the 512k models. remember that the athlon 64 has a shorter pipeline, so it doesn't need as much cache as a p4 prescott to get the same effeciency.