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So, the FSB and cache specs are what confuse me.
Intel® Pentium™ Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
as opposed to paying $200 more for:
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8700 (2.53GHz/1066Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
Would that be worth it? I'm a .Net developer, I listen to music, I do NOT watch movies, I don't do much else. Basically, Visual Studio, Firefox, and SQL Server Management Studio.
is an extra 2 MB and 266 Mhz on the cache and FSB respectively worth it?
PS -- I'm throwing around terms like I know what they mean. I really don't. I mean, I know what a cache is, and I know FSB means Front Side Bus, and I've read about them in wikipedia, but that really REALLY didn't help me translate this into something I can use and understand.
So, it is NOT worth the extra $200. I'm getting 4 GB of RAM (my current machine had 1, upgraded to 2 and it made a big difference, so I'm hoping 4 will grow well with me.
Thanks for the answer. It's so confusing when you have to do this and you haven't kept up with the hardware side of things since 1999. – Matt Dawdy – 2009-10-18T03:20:32.293
If you aren't getting a 64-bit O/S, don't be surprised/disappointed if you can't see all of that 4GB of RAM. You'll only see somewhere around 3 - 3.5 GB with 32-bit XP or Vista, for example. (Just FYI.) – Michael Todd – 2009-10-18T03:38:20.720
I'd think that the cache size is more likely to affect performance than the clock speed, myself, but unless somebody's playing games or some other really demanding task it should be irrelevant. For the purposes listed, any reasonably modern machine will be more than powerful enough. – David Thornley – 2009-10-19T14:18:15.747