The results in one of the most popular music composing applications are moderately dependent on the L2 cache size. The performance difference between the CPU with the biggest and smallest L2 cache doesn?t go beyond 5-6%.

3ds max 8 doesn?t really care about the L2 cache size. The results delta in this application lies within 3%.

So, we can conclude that the size of L2 cache memory affects the performance in office tasks in the first place. As for most applications dealing with multimedia content creation and editing, you shouldn?t overestimate the importance of large L2 cache. You will only be able to improve the performance just a little bit by choosing a Core based CPU with the maximum L2 cache: 3-5% at the most.

We decided to discuss the results obtained in gaming applications in the end, as they would be completely different. Take a look:

True, the games are very sensitive to the changes in CPU L2 cache memory size. The biggest effect is noticeable when we drop the size of L2 cache to 1MB. That is why the new Pentium E2000 processors will hardly become a good choice for gamers. It makes much more sense to invest in more expensive Core 2 Duo in this case: even a CPU from E4000 series will do if you are looking to build an inexpensive gaming system.