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Celeron 366@550: should i disable L2?

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heeroyuy

Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2003
Location
GTA, Ontario
After using different cpus, ram and motherboard, I have come up with the conclusion that the L2 cache is causing for the instability.
Using memtest, it would create error on the 6th test, but once i disable the L2 cache, everything is fine. I thought L2 has ECC which doesn't seem to help in this case. While running Prime95 and sandra, it never crashed. I have tried to increase the vcore up to 2.2V with a big fan and paste which doesn't help.

Will there be a big performance hit for disabling the L2 cache as i remember reading some reviews comparing 300A with 300 and there was some difference. This computer is mainly for surfing net, email, music and watching movie. Not much gaming, as video card ain't great. I can't decide if i want to keep L2 on or not since i've gotten some blue screen from 2K claiming there is "hard error".

Thanks for any opinion.
 
Well, you can try disabling it and find out, but I don't think you'll like the result. L2 cache is very important, as it keeps the most frequently used instructions nearby, rather than having to fetch them from system memory.

Take a look at this article, http://www.systemlogic.net/articles/00/10/cache/

And the difference between the Celeron, and the Celeron A is that the L2 is on die cache with the A, which means it runs at the speed of the CPU, rather than the system bus.
 
Disabling the L2 Cache on any CPU is a bad idea, performance will suffer terribly. Any gain in MHz you achieve from disabling it will be much less than the performance you lose overall due to the lack of L2 Cache.

As you mentioned, there were two Celeron 300 CPUs:

Celeron 300 - Covington Core (No L2 Cache at all, Slot 1 Only)
Celeron 300A - Mendocino Core (128Kb L2 Cache On-Die running at full CPU speed, Slot 1 and PPGA370)
 
uh...366@550 gives me quite a gain i think. Most applications loads faster with it too. If i change back to 366 and run 2K it's gonna be pretty slow.

I'll let my mom be the judge as she's using this computer. Unless she can detect a noticeable slowness from disabling the L2 Cache, i'll just stick with that for a stable system rather than something that would put out blue screen once in like a week.

This cpu has been used for a long time, since 99 and has been OC for 5 yrs...hopefully it's not due to that...
Unless i can find a 566 somewhere...:D
 
Kind of off topic...
I had a K6-2 @380 Mhz for 5 years (my sis had been using it most of the time for the past year, since I built myself a nice rig (see sig)). Anyway, I just bought her a 2000+ K7 (an early b-day present). WOW... what a difference. Very cheap too, came out around $230 from newegg (processor, mobo, case, hard drive and a nice keyboard :) )...

Maybe it's time to get your mom something faster...
 
I just enabled back the L2 Cache...been running prime95 for 5 hrs now...no problem yet...i guess i'll have to wait a little longer to see if any problem arises...

I'm already having problem paying for tuition...besides she only uses it for web and watching movies which is sufficient. This is not meant to be a gaming machine at all(it was a few yrs ago)...
 
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