[SOLVED] 2 CPUs......2 Caches?

[adrian0883]

I have a Dell Precision T7600 with 2 Xeon E5-2620 processors in it. I am wondering what to set the L2 and L3 cache to since this system has 2 processors in it. The L2 Cache is 1536 and The L3 Cache is 15Mb for 1 processor. Is that what i set the cache to?


Specs:

Operating System: Windows 7 Pro (64-Bit), Windows 10 Pro (64-Bit)
CPU: Intel Xeon E5 2620 @ 2.00GHz (2 Processors)
RAM: 64.0GB DDR3 @ 664MHz
Motherboard: Dell Inc. 082WXT
Graphics 3071MB NVIDIA Quadro K4000
Storage: 1769GB Intel Raid 0 Volume SCSI Disk Device (2 1TB Drives), 3726GB Western Digital WD My Book 25EE USB Device (External)
Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GT80N
Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio

 

[kanewolf]

I have a Dell Precision T7600 with 2 Xeon E5-2620 processors in it. I am wondering what to set the L2 and L3 cache to since this system has 2 processors in it. The L2 Cache is 1536 and The L3 Cache is 15Mb for 1 processor. Is that what i set the cache to?


Specs:

Operating System: Windows 7 Pro (64-Bit), Windows 10 Pro (64-Bit)
CPU: Intel Xeon E5 2620 @ 2.00GHz (2 Processors)
RAM: 64.0GB DDR3 @ 664MHz
Motherboard: Dell Inc. 082WXT
Graphics 3071MB NVIDIA Quadro K4000
Storage: 1769GB Intel Raid 0 Volume SCSI Disk Device (2 1TB Drives), 3726GB Western Digital WD My Book 25EE USB Device (External)
Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GT80N
Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio

You don't "set" the cache. It is a hardware feature. Dual socket motherboards have additional paths to connect the two CPUs. Data in the cache on CPU1 would be marked as invalid if CPU2 were to fetch it. Some inefficiency can happen because of this. But operating systems try to compensate by leaving tasks on a socket as long as possible.

 

[adrian0883]

You don't "set" the cache. It is a hardware feature. Dual socket motherboards have additional paths to connect the two CPUs. Data in the cache on CPU1 would be marked as invalid if CPU2 were to fetch it. Some inefficiency can happen because of this. But operating systems try to compensate by leaving tasks on a socket as long as possible.

So programs like Yamicsoft Windows 7 Manager that claim to set the L2 and L3 Cache are just lying and I need to leave it alone? I also seem some site saying to use the registry to "set" the cache to a certain number. Just ignore all of that?

 

[kanewolf]

So programs like Yamicsoft Windows 7 Manager that claim to set the L2 and L3 Cache are just lying and I need to leave it alone? I also seem some site saying to use the registry to "set" the cache to a certain number. Just ignore all of that?

I am not familiar with that software. I would not recommend changing anything related to CPU cache. Intel spent lots of time and money to size those caches. I doubt you can improve.

 

[InvalidError]

So programs like Yamicsoft Windows 7 Manager that claim to set the L2 and L3 Cache are just lying and I need to leave it alone?

Lots of software make lots of fancy yet baseless claims.

As far as L2/L3 cache sizes are concerned, latency is dictated by the hardware design and disabling some of it by software won't change that. It will however increase the cache miss rate and be practically guaranteed to yield worse performance. All else being equal, which it would be for software-limited cache sizes since the underlying hardware is unchanged, bigger cache is better.

 

[adrian0883]

I understand now. I'm not touching anything. Thank you @kanewolf and @InvalidError for your helpful and FAST responses.