Prescott to Northwood performance decrease?

I am thinking about changing from Prescott to Northwood CPU's because of incompatibility issues.
I need to know if the differences in L2 Caches (Prescott 1mb L2, Northwood 512KB L2) will make much of a performance decrease.

current:
3.2GHz Prescott 1mb L2 Cache
2GB DDR 400 Mushkin
80GB SATA Seagate
6800 GT OC 256mb

What incompatabilities do you have with the prescott that you would not have with the Northy? At stock speeds, a 3.2 Northy will actually perform a bit better than a 3.2 Prescott IIRC.

Hi acid

I'm a noob poster here but I have an AI7 with a 3.2 Northwood & it's a great combo. If you plan on overclocking, the northwood will not get as far as the prescott but it seems smoother & faster even at lower clockspeeds. I have managed to get to 3.7ghz stable on air. The 3.2E D0 or E0 can get to 4.0ghz.

Although prescotts will work in the AI7 with the correct bios version, the PWM circuitry is not heavy enough to carry the extra wattage IMO. If you want a prescott get a i875 board or an lga775 setup.

current:
3.2c @ 3.7, Abit AI7
2x512 OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev2
2x80 WD IDE, CDRW, DVD
eVGA 6800U

northwood's are faster than a prescott clock for clock
they also run much much cooler (at least the s478 versions)

If you can't get a Prescott to at least 3.8GHz than i would opt for a Northwood because that's about where they max out. Like the others said, clock for clock Northwood is going to win even with half the cache. The pipeline on the Prescott was made longer which is why it takes a hit at lower clocks. Once you hit 3.8+ you'll start to see them pull ahead. And as mentioned, Northwood s478 runs MUCH cooler than the Prescott counterpart.

Ok guys, you have all been a huge help and I have made up my mind.

I will stick with my AI7 for the time being but go ahead and trade out the Prescott for the Northwood.

On my other posts if you have not read them, I said how hot the CPU was getting and it turned out the board was not compatible with the Prescott because I had the wrong BIOS version. And it was too late for me when I found that out, the CPU had already been toasted.