Influence of L2 Cache Size on Wolfdale Performance

The release of the first Wolfdale processor with only half the cache memory of the previous models made us curious about the influence of cache on the resulting performance of the CPU. So, the first test we carried out was about the performance hit accompanying the reduction of L2 cache from 6 to 3 megabytes.

To perform the test we made our Core 2 Duo E7200 work as a Core 2 Duo E8200, i.e. at a frequency of 2.66GHz with a 1333MHz FSB. It’s easy to realize: the default frequency multiplier of the Core 2 Duo E7200 is 9.5x and can be lowered to 7x. Overclocking the FSB from 266 to 333MHz is not a problem. The resulting CPU frequency is close to the default one and is achieved easily.

We can see no catastrophic performance hit because of the reduction of cache memory. Games suffer the most, having a performance hit of 9-10%. The speed of archiving is considerably lower, too. The other applications are quite favorable to the Wolfdale with 3MB L2 cache, running at similar speed on both versions of the 45nm core. The average performance loss with the reduced-cache Wolfdale is about 5%.