On 28 Feb 2001, at 8:00, Jon Lindgren wrote:

> Absolutely, but I'm not concerned with the PIII.  I was wondering if
> anyone had a "it feels much slower" type of reaction to these machines
> or

Hi,

if with "these" machines you meant Intel cpus:

I had PentiumPros with 256K (or 512K, what ever the cheaper ones 
had) and once tested the system with 1MB chips: I found no 
difference, probably benchmarks could show some. I have a MAD 
K6-III in a board with 2MB external cache. The same CPU in a 
otherwise identical board with 512K did not feel slower (both with 
1GB Ram). I tested Durons to CE Athlons with the same frequency, 
the Durons felt marginal less speedy. Other observations with PIIIs 
and Xeons are not good, as there were different environments, but I 
would not call the Xeons faster. In the Intel world it is talked about 
"cacheable ranges", that means depending on the cache, only parts 
of the Ram can be cached. 

HTH

mike