- Joined
- Jan 31, 2003
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
there seems to be a lot of speculation in this thread 
i have had a bunch of 2.4ghz and 3.2ghz Xeon (P4 based, 604 pin processors) with L3 cache....some had 1mb and some had 2mb....these were ALL M0 stepping Xeons.
here is an example of one SL7AE that i had (3.2ghz, 512k L2, and 2mb of L3----all IN the processor, not on the mobo):
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL7AE
i also had some SL72Y's (with 1mb L3) and some 2.4ghz SL7D4 and SL7DF's with 1mb L3 as well (http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL7D4)
you can find them all here:
http://processorfinder.intel.com/List.aspx?ProcFam=528&sSpec=&OrdCode=
now, as for performance, what i found was with the 1mb L3 cache i got about 3-4% more performance on most apps at the same clock speed (i video encode a lot)...and with the 2mb L3 cache i got about 5-7% faster encode times...(superpi was also faster by a similar amount IIRC)
at the time, there were at least two advantages to using these M0 stepping L3 cache containing Xeons:
1) the obvious 3-7% performance gain
2) they generally oc'd better since they were M0 stepping (eg, i tried about 10-15 of these SL7AE 3.2ghz 2mb L3 xeons and they all clocked at 3.6+ghz, with some hitting 3.75ghz stable, with the 0.13micron process!)
(and remember at the time i had these xeons, there were NO dual core pentiums, so for videoencoding, if you wanted mulitple cpus to provide 70-90% more performance, you needed Xeons, although getting the extra L3 was not required)
(the 2.4's cost about $75 more than non-L3 Xeons as a pair on ebay and the 3.2's cost about $150 to 300 more on ebay as a pair)
side note:
these L3 containing Xeons and P4EE's typically were called Gallatins, although ithat term was reserved by Intel to refer to the MP (or multi-processor capable Xeons that cost A LOT more than my DP or dual processor capable Xeons MP's could be used in 4+way socket mobos, while DP's could only be used in two socket mobos, like the venerable 875 chipset)
i have had a bunch of 2.4ghz and 3.2ghz Xeon (P4 based, 604 pin processors) with L3 cache....some had 1mb and some had 2mb....these were ALL M0 stepping Xeons.
here is an example of one SL7AE that i had (3.2ghz, 512k L2, and 2mb of L3----all IN the processor, not on the mobo):
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL7AE
i also had some SL72Y's (with 1mb L3) and some 2.4ghz SL7D4 and SL7DF's with 1mb L3 as well (http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL7D4)
you can find them all here:
http://processorfinder.intel.com/List.aspx?ProcFam=528&sSpec=&OrdCode=
now, as for performance, what i found was with the 1mb L3 cache i got about 3-4% more performance on most apps at the same clock speed (i video encode a lot)...and with the 2mb L3 cache i got about 5-7% faster encode times...(superpi was also faster by a similar amount IIRC)
at the time, there were at least two advantages to using these M0 stepping L3 cache containing Xeons:
1) the obvious 3-7% performance gain
2) they generally oc'd better since they were M0 stepping (eg, i tried about 10-15 of these SL7AE 3.2ghz 2mb L3 xeons and they all clocked at 3.6+ghz, with some hitting 3.75ghz stable, with the 0.13micron process!)
(and remember at the time i had these xeons, there were NO dual core pentiums, so for videoencoding, if you wanted mulitple cpus to provide 70-90% more performance, you needed Xeons, although getting the extra L3 was not required)
(the 2.4's cost about $75 more than non-L3 Xeons as a pair on ebay and the 3.2's cost about $150 to 300 more on ebay as a pair)
side note:
these L3 containing Xeons and P4EE's typically were called Gallatins, although ithat term was reserved by Intel to refer to the MP (or multi-processor capable Xeons that cost A LOT more than my DP or dual processor capable Xeons MP's could be used in 4+way socket mobos, while DP's could only be used in two socket mobos, like the venerable 875 chipset)
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those were the days though...that and the 300A, which was actually the first CPU to have on-die L2, could hang with the top of the line PII 450 with a quick and easy bump in FSB to 100MHz.
