> I believe it's the difference between a 4M and 8M cache, and _possibly_ a > 1066MHz and 1333Mhz BUS difference other than clock speed, from what I can > tell. I wish Apple gave the SKUs of the CPUs they use so I could tell you > for sure, and googling came up with nada. But with those differences, > you'll > be able to push more through the pipes faster. Both chips are 65nm-based > by > the way.
4MB vs. 8MB is indicative of how many cores it has. 4MB = 2 cores, 8MB = 4 cores. There are extreme dual-core and extreme quad-core CPUs. All "Extreme" denotes is a higher clock. In older Intel processors, the Extreme denoted a higher cache size (2MB vs 512KB in the P4's), but not any more. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=2 About halfway down the page it has specs for the whole core 2 lineup. Any model number with a Q is quad-core, others are dual-core. Interestingly, there isn't a 2.8GHz chip in the lineup, so I guess Apple had their own model made. My guess is that it's dual-core with 4MB cache, since Apple reserves the quad-core chips for the Mac Pro lineup. Yeah, on http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html it says 4MB cache, so it's dual-core. You should also note that iMacs have an 800MHz system bus, denoted on that page. Not sure how much real-world difference that makes, but it's slower than the standard Core 2 chips. The memory is clocked at 667MHz, too. Hope that helps. Greg /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
