Reading Hardware

I'm in the market for a new processor. I'll probably by the Athlon 64, however, I'm also looking at AMD 64x2 procs. In the specs there are two different cores mentioned: Manchester and Toledo?
What's the difference?

Once Fred Neitszche declared God is Dead, f*ck became the most important word in the English languag

It's effectively cache size. Word of advice:

Get a dual core opteron instead. AMD has recently put these beasts on socket 939 and they outperform the X2's at a much smaller price point, and all of the opteron's have 1MB L2. These dual core opteron's are taking 1Ghz Oc's without so much as a whimper... so you know they're sturdy.

Here's a link. If you can use an X2, you can use these.

Edit:

Toledo's have 1MB of L2 cache PER CORE, where as manchesters have 512KB PER CORE. 4200+ and 4400+ are at similar clock speeds, as are 4600+ and 4800+ chips. The difference is, in each set, the lower number is a manchester(4200+, 4600+), and the higher is a toledo (4400+, 4800+) and thus have lesser or greater cache sizes, respectively.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Dec 01, 2005.

Thanks for explaining that Aynjell.

Interesting point you make there. I'll have to consider getting one of those, prolly my next one.
I decided to go with the 939, although I wasn't at first. Cost was a big issue, but I didn't want to buy a use one. I was going to go with a 734 board, originally, but it could only go to 800mhz, and no potential for dual core.

It's f***ing amazing to think that one can talk in terms of gigs when it comes to oc'ing, but there it is. I'm truly amazed at the technology of these Opterons. I was thinking of getting an X2 too :), but settled for the sc 3000. (Just so I could get it running!)
I'll probably do that for the next one. I don't think that one can have too many working procs!!

Thanks for clearing that up. I think you explained that well.
The difference in L2 size creates a relative difference in speed, so that at the same core speed, the L2 gives it an apparent 200MHz boost. (Kinda like a turbo~)...interesting.

Once Fred Neitszche declared God is Dead, f*ck became the most important word in the English languag