Windows 7: Cache vs. Processor speed

Which is really more important?

Today I bought the Core i5-750 which is 2.66Ghz with 8MB of "Smart Cache". As I'm looking at a big box store website, I see that the Core i5 661, which is rated at 3.33Ghz with 4MB of Level2 cache, is selling for the same price that I bought the 750 for.



As I haven't picked up my order from the store yet, I was wondering if I should keep my order or cancel it, and pick up the 661.

Thoughts?

I guess the best way would be to find a web site that showed the performance of all the cpus. I saw one the other day that have every single intel cpu for the last 5 years or so in a giant lineup of benchmarks. Of course I can't find it now

In my general experience though, if the CPU technology is the same or very similar than clock speed rules and memory and cache are of little real world consequence.

As the archetectures between two chips differs more and more then clock speed is not as comparible but between those two it probably is.

Thanks. From what I've been reading, it seems that higher clock speed would help in gaming situations, where higher cache levels would help in encoding etc. Think I'm just going to go into Frys and tell them that I want the 661 instead.

I found one of the benchmarks.

On this one the 750 beats the 661 bu +30%!

PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End

But that's just a single one. Need to find some for gaming, not sure what passmark does exactly but simple number crunching might benefit from cache, whereas gaming not so much.

Aaaah, the 750 is a quad core and the 661 is a dual core, that's why.

I think maybe I'd go for the 750... my quad core laptop kills my dual core desktop in photoshop.

Yeah, I just found that out as well. There's no way I'm going from a Core2Quad to a dual core. The 750 it is. Pretty nice that the 750 is only $10 more than the 661.

fseal this the one you're looking for?

Bench - CPU - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Thanks for that Stormy. Looks like the 750 is going to blow the Q8400 I have now out of the water.

Awsome

You're welcome guys.