Pentium 4 w/bigger cache better ?

[lukejs]

Hello, I run sonar 3 producer edition, with 1 powercore, and am trying to run gigasampler but am using way too much cpu power. I have a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 with the 512 mb L2 cache. Will I see any difference if I buy the 3 gigahertz p4 with the 1 megabyte cache ? Any ideas on which processer I should buy to improve performance ? PS. it has to be a single , non 64 bit cpu.... Thanks, Luke

[Hammer v2]

Don't do it mate...
The P4s with 1 meg of cache are called "prescotts"
Intel designed these chips to run incredibly fast but not do a helluva lot with the extreme megahertz (Marketing thing). You'll probably find that a 3gig prescott is actually slower than you 3gig P4 (which incidently is called a "Northwood". What's more intel has had MAJOR heat issues with the prescott or pressHOT as it is more affectionately known. You need big fat loud fans to keep a presscott cool.

The cheapest way for you to up the ante would be to buy a second computer (a cheap athlon or p4...NOT celeron) would be ideal) dedicated to gigasampler and hook it up with this...
http://www.fx-max.com/gt/

good luck!

H.

[lukejs]

Hi...thanks for your input ! I think I'll wait a little bit and buy the 3.4 P4 with the 2 megabyte cache...after it falls a bit in price...... thanks, Luke

[manning1]

luke . i'm a computer engineer for years. you cant beat processing power imho.
heres what i would do before i spent a penny.
find a friendly computer dealer and try gigasampler on both
that new p4 your considering AND an amd64 system.
and see which performs better, the amd 64 is a VERY POWERFULL PROCESSOR. this is the only real way your going to be able to make unbiased performance comparisons imho.
just an idea to help.

[sadworld]

i'd be interested in hearing more opinions on the 1 meg cache processors as i am building one for myself currently. i thought through my research and talkin to folks that they are better for audio... also i'm purchasing the new ddr2 ram, which is supposed to be much faster as well. can't report on it yet as i have not used it, but again, i'd like to hear more opinions on it. also if you're not recording in the same room that your computer is in, noise from the fans should not be an issure, unless of course it just annoys you to hear it.

[manning1]

i'm not sure about the advantages of big caches.
because of the way multitrack software is written by programmers.
sorry to get technical - but its the only way to explain this.
software programmers typically in their code bring in
tracks as small chunks and allocate and deallocate resources
like memory etc in small chunks. they do this to be efficient in their use of resources. in their programs they define "arrays"
which are allocated and deallocated. NOT HUGE ARRAYS. some do but this is frowned on by some in programming circles. thus in terms of efficiency this is why you dont see huge leaps in performance sometimes even though one might have upgraded.
in summary it takes A HUGE INCREASE in processor ghz power to notice a diff imho. in summary MAYBE some folks will notice an improvement with bigger cache - but it depends on many factors.
i still say - one cant beat processor power.if and when in my opinion 6 to 8 ghz processors are available and lets say they have small caches they will stomp over lower ghz processors with larger caches imho. but we will see.
the only way to tell is do "trials" of your own software environment on a pc with a big processor cache compared
to a processor with a smaller processor cache. and see if differences are noticeable.
in summary give me more GHZ over larger caches.