ok first off i have a sempron 3400+ and it has ran great. I currently have it overclocked to 2.4ghz which is very impressive. the temperatures through rivatuner and speedfan show that idle it runs around 30C and under load usually it maxs out at around 38-39C.

i want to upgrade to a athlon 64 series processors, (3000+ which i can still get through newegg.com selling for $56) mainly because off the L2 cache off 512k.

I was wondering if i would notice a difference from the L2 cache of the sempron 3400+ (256k) vs the athlon 64 3000+ of (512k)?

since i have my sempron overclocked to 2.4ghz would this outway getting the 512k L2 cache of the athlon 3000+?

i think i could overclock the athlon 64 3000+ cpu alittle.

basically would the L2 cache of 512k be worth it?

has anybody seen any benchmarks that show that it does make a difference?

also there a some of the higher athlons selling on ebay. (3200+ and 3400+) some even have a 1mb L2 cache.

i play games which work good on this current setup. (fear, doom3, quake 4, cod2) but that is mainly dependant on teh video card. so this isnt really my problem.

what im looking for is an increase in performance when doing mulitmedia stuff, like watching DTV or editing movies, converting files, photo editing etc.

my current system( sempron 3400+, asus k8n nforce 250 chipset mobo, 2 x 512 mb corsair value select DDR, agp BFG 6800gs video card)

Having twice the Cache L2 gives on average slighty less performance than an extra 200 MHz can give. If you're happy with your current Processor performance, its worthless doing such an small upgrade. Besides, when buying a Socket 754 Athlon 64, you should make sure than you're getting one of the few 80nm Venices available and not an old 130nm Newcastle or Clawhammer (Those are the ones with 1 MB Cache L2) that consumes fairly more power and are less overclockeable.

ok yeah the one on newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/Product/...asp?...N82E16819103605

this is the venice core 90nm so theorectically i could OC it the same as my sempron 3400+ to 2.4ghz,

hmm this would be a good experiment since its only 56 bucks and free shipping.

im gonna stay away from ones on ebay, but if any of u guys have a clawhammer there willing to sell let me know