Hi All. For my new motherboard I was looking to buy a Pentium 2.8-3.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache. I was just wondering if I would notice a big difference if I went with a processor that only had a 512KB cache instead of 1MB?
Also, I will be buying a hard drive soon. I am happy with my Hitachi ATA 160GB slave drive that I have in my current system- however, my new motherboard supports SATA drives, would it be better to get a SATA drive or stick to IDE?

Thanks.

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If space is not a problem, stick with your current drive. SATA, at the moment, only offers very small performance increases and smaller cables.

What do you plan to use your PC for?

If space is not a problem, stick with your current drive. SATA, at the moment, only offers very small performance increases and smaller cables.

What do you plan to use your PC for?

I plan to use my new PC for some games, Need 4 Speed UG 2, Half Life 2, some graphic design (photoshop), internet, word processing, PVR, and a little video editing.

For gaming, an Athlon 64 would be the best choice. However, since you plan on performing a wide range of tasks (notably video editing!) a P4 will still be very good.

For the range of clockspeeds specified, you will probably find the Northwood P4s (512Kb L2 cache) faster in most applications. However, the Prescotts would not be much slower in performance, plus they also have some extra optimisations not yet commonly utilised by software developers. Note that Prescotts run a fair bit warmer.

hey Coconut Monkey what do u think of the new P4 600-series intel is releasing

comes in 3.2Ghz,3.4Ghz, and 3.6Ghz speeds
all have a 2MB L2 cache
and they are all 64-bit

i think those are gonna really give AMD a run for their money

hey Coconut Monkey what do u think of the new P4 600-series intel is releasing

comes in 3.2Ghz,3.4Ghz, and 3.6Ghz speeds
all have a 2MB L2 cache
and they are all 64-bit

i think those are gonna really give AMD a run for their money

We will have to wait and see, but they look promising from the specs. It's a pity I can't plug any into my current Intel setup. :(

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