Speed or Cache - 5000 black edition or 5600+ windsor

Hello all. Help me decide on one or the other. Newegg has the 5000 be for 130 and the 5600 windsor for 140. The windsor is faster 2.8 Ghz and has 2x1 meg of cache, whereas the black edition supposed will easily overclock higher, but only has 2 x 512 cache. I really only play games. Decisions decisions...
Thanks,
Howard

 

C'mon guys. 26 views and no one has an opinion?

 

well have you ever overclocked before. if not then you know which one to go for.

 

I think cache size doesn't have a noticeable impact on games

 

it has some, check this benchmark.

 

Well if you know how to overclock go with the black edition. If thats a no go with the 5600+. Here is a good review of the black edition http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/22/budget_overclocker/

 

hi
I built an AMD sys on a FX2 5600 and it runs great, I just picked up a M\B combo deal from Tiger direct for a FX2 5000 Black edition, and im gonna build another system on that, as i picked up a 8800GT so now i went crazy and have 2 good PCI-E vga cards and only one PCI-E M\B! so my son will benefit from my temporary madness.as hell get my 5600 system.
its a great time to build computers, they were on the ropes this time 2 years ago now they are making a big comeback.
This is my third build in 3 yrs i built an fx 55\7 939 system with AGP board cause i didnt want to go PCI-E!
and now ive built 2 of them! Im losing it i think!Middle age crazies got me good.
Im done for several years after this my wife is gonna kill me if i dont stop.I just couldnt help myself prices were so good and the product out there were never better. i blame it all on the 8800 gt!

 

those are all intel processors so you can't really go by that review. AMD has a different structure so the impact may not be that big as an intel's.

 

www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3122&p=2

Compare the AMD 5600+ and the 5000+ as the article explains. Then check the 5000+ numbers to the same size cache lower models(4800+ and lower).

 

I would go with more L2 cache. I've tested a AMD 4000+ San Siego with 1 meg L2 and a AMD x2 4200+ Manchester with 512 L2 cache per core.

Synthetic benchmarks put the x2 ahead but games played better on the single core with 1 meg L2. Even when I fired up Bio Shock it played better on the single with more L2.

 

on the single cores the extra cache= aprox 200mhz so a 2400 mhz 1meg cache processor would give you about the same power as a 2600 mhz 512 cache.