Quote Originally Posted by Seraphiel View Post
Intel kinda thought differently with the Gallatin P4 EE back in the days, didn't they? AMD with its Phenoms also thinks differently at present time. L3 isn't only a thing for servers, and not something without benefits for non-servers.
L3 is a substitute for the size you cant make the L2. Just as the L2 is the same for the L1. Or main memory is for L2/L3 etc.

In the Gallatin it was used to give a small boost, but at a big price. AMD is abit different since its stuck to the way they made their quadcore design and "lacked" cache knowhow if you can say that.

So a L3 only makes sense if you cant make the same size in a L2. It could be 8MB L2 is too much for Intel, but looking on the 6MB on penryn...

Another example is current Core 2 Xeon offerings, including MP have been completely ridden of L3.

I think many want Nehalem to be a K10 copy in design.