Cpu Cache question.

[Acidwinter]

Ok im looking to upgrade my CPU. Ive built a few computers and knew the basics, but now im starting to get down to it, making performance key. I built a pc and threw a Celeron D 478 2.93ghz cpu in there with a cache of 256kb. Just to see how much my fans would OC this thing to, I oc'd it up to 3.2ghz. Now if I bought a P4 3.2ghz CPU with 1mb cache, would that help my performance x4? I thought a cpu was based mostly on the ghz, but now im looking into things, the cache has important play. I mean obviously its better then my Celeron D, but how much better would it make things? Because if its only a little better, I may just wait to build an AMD64 dual core system when I have to upgrade next, but if its going to make it at LEAST 50% or around there, I will gladly fork over the dough to get a p4. Thanks!

P.S. By performance, I mean gameplay wise. I dont encode or videoedit and mostly play games like BF2, FEAR etc etc.

~~~~CPU I WAS LOOKING INTO~~~~~~~
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1016658

~~~~CPU I HAVE NOW~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1109132 :haha:

 

[Nodsu]

You cannot take any single property of a CPU and say "this makes stuff X times better". Everything depends on everything else, including all the other hardware and the exact kind of workload you intend to put on your CPU.

A task that fit into 64K of system cache will run just as fast no matter if your CPU has 64K or 256K or 2048K or onboard cache or whether you have fast or slow RAM.

Another task randomly accessing two gigabytes worth of data in RAM will gain or lose almost nothing from the CPU cache, but will depend largely on the speed of your memory subsystem, including the hard drives used for swapping.

Benchmark your system with your own stuff or look up some real-world-like CPU benchmarks results (and decide how they apply to you).