800EB L2 cache settings

[Lancelot]

I'm currently looking into tweaking my inlaw's P3-800EB 133Mhz Via system cuz it's performs and benchmarks WAY lower than my Celeron 800 100Mhz iBX system!?? It has an oem MSI mobo and I noticed it's BIOS has a L2 cache option with settings "Writeback" or "Writethru". Which is the best setting?

[Kingslayer]

I would lay the blame for the low benchmarks on the MSI board. There is no way that chip should get beat by a Celeron of the same speed, regardless what the cache is set at.

[Jon]

I agree. Adrian's Rojakpot (http://www.adriansrojakpot.com) did a test on different L2 settings and while a few of the settings made a difference they were by no means going to be very noticeable from a performance standpoint. A P3 800EB should be able to chew up, spit out and ask for another when compared to a Celly 800, no question.

[Lancelot]

I totally agree it must be the mobo. When I saw the scores this system spits out, I was like "This can't be!" so I started checking it all out, installed the latest Via 4-in-1 drivers, tweaked the BIOS a little, but still... I'll try to post it's Sandra scores against my Celeron scores this weekend. My inlaws have a second system in their office. It's a P3-933 and this thing flies and that's not in the extra 133Mhz CPU speed, but it has an Asus CUV4X mobo. So a mobo can really noticeably make a difference...