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#1
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Just to let you know
Hi all
Bought my fave hardware magazine the other day and discovered something which I thought others might want to know about ( just in case ). A lot of people these days are running processors with a fast L2 cache, normally 512kb - Northwood or Bartons for example. Did you kow that if you are running XP you will only be using 256Kb of this at the most as XP is only configured to utilise that amount. If you are running a 512Kb L2 Cache or higher you need to register it manually. You can do this by going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\SessionManager\MemoryMan agement and find the DWORD entry : SecondLevelDataCache. When entering values here, be sure to use the correct numeric system. 256Kb should be entered as 100 in hexadecimal, 512Kb is 200 and 1024Kb is 400 Hope this is of use to some of you guys and gals Peace Daniel |
#2
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From the horse's mouth (Microsoft):
Begin quote..... SecondLevelDataCache records the size of the processor cache, also known as the secondary or L2 cache. If the value of this entry is 0, the system attempts to retrieve the L2 cache size from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for the platform. If it fails, it uses a default L2 cache size of 256 KB. If the value of this entry is not 0, it uses this value as the L2 cache size. This entry is designed as a secondary source of cache size information for computers on which the HAL cannot detect the L2 cache. This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2 caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches. SecondLevelDataCache can increase performance by approximately 2 percent in certain cases for older computers with ample memory (more than 64 MB) by scattering physical pages better in the address space so there are not so many L2 cache collisions. Setting SecondLevelDataCache to 256 KB rather than 2 MB (when the computer has a 2 MB L2 cache) would probably have about a 0.4 percent performance penalty. End quote.... Seems to me that unless you're running a P2 or older that this is a non-issue. "Daniel Yates" wrote in message ... Hi all Bought my fave hardware magazine the other day and discovered something which I thought others might want to know about ( just in case ). A lot of people these days are running processors with a fast L2 cache, normally 512kb - Northwood or Bartons for example. Did you kow that if you are running XP you will only be using 256Kb of this at the most as XP is only configured to utilise that amount. If you are running a 512Kb L2 Cache or higher you need to register it manually. You can do this by going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\SessionManager\MemoryMan agement and find the DWORD entry : SecondLevelDataCache. When entering values here, be sure to use the correct numeric system. 256Kb should be entered as 100 in hexadecimal, 512Kb is 200 and 1024Kb is 400 Hope this is of use to some of you guys and gals Peace Daniel |
#3
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"Frank Weston" wrote in message ... From the horse's mouth (Microsoft): Begin quote..... SecondLevelDataCache records the size of the processor cache, also known as the secondary or L2 cache. If the value of this entry is 0, the system attempts to retrieve the L2 cache size from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for the platform. If it fails, it uses a default L2 cache size of 256 KB. If the value of this entry is not 0, it uses this value as the L2 cache size. This entry is designed as a secondary source of cache size information for computers on which the HAL cannot detect the L2 cache. This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2 caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches. SecondLevelDataCache can increase performance by approximately 2 percent in certain cases for older computers with ample memory (more than 64 MB) by scattering physical pages better in the address space so there are not so many L2 cache collisions. Setting SecondLevelDataCache to 256 KB rather than 2 MB (when the computer has a 2 MB L2 cache) would probably have about a 0.4 percent performance penalty. End quote.... Seems to me that unless you're running a P2 or older that this is a non-issue. snip Setting the SecondLevelDataCache to 2MB??? Thats seems a very high value to me? Either way I am not 100% clued up no the actions of L2 but your post has helped a little. thought I would share the article as when I checked my setting on a P4 1.7Ghz there was no value at all. Regards Daniel Yates |
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