How to measure cache performance?

Which factor depend upon the speed and performance of the cpu, either FSB, cache or CPU clock cycles?

• Hey, I want to purchase CPU for gaming and I choose Q8200. It has 1333MHZ FSB and 4MB L2 cache. My major question is that I am confuse about CPU selection that I cannot understand that at least which factor is most dependent upon the speed and performance of the CPU either FSB, cache or CPU clock cycles?And also explain me the reason of dependency? Any hardware Engineer/Expert that know the details, please clear my this confusion? Thank you very much!

• Answer:

  The list of factors that affects CPU speed is so massive that there's very little point in trying to compare things like L2 cache size and clock speed. You're better off just looking at the overall performance of the CPU for the particular tasks you plan on doing with it. Key factors include: Number of cores. Clock speed. L2 Cache size and speed. Number of memory channels (or FSB speed). Pipeline depth. Number of execution units. Ability to increase clock speed when load/temperature permits. Instruction set extensions. Extensions to permit better use of execution units (such as hyper-threading). Speed of core-to-core cache coherency. If CPUs are otherwise comparable, a higher clock speed will mean a better performing CPU. But that's true of every specification. If CPUs are otherwise identical, a larger L2 cache will mean a faster CPU. But we very rarely compare two CPUs that differ in only one way.