Posted 28 July 2005 - 06:41 PM
@Zxian: There's much more then Sockets to take into consideration when matching a CPU to a board. There's the FSB, the core generation and the processor features to take into account. A simple example are the new dual-cored Pentium 4s (Pentium D). Those are LGA 775 processors but will only work with Intel's new chipsets, namely the 945P, 945G, and 955X chipsets.
@computerMan: Cache is fast memory that stores often used information so that the processor doesn't have to spend time waiting for the rest of the computer to get the information for it. There are three levels of cache. L1, L2 and L3. L1 is the fastest and the smallest (usually 8KB). L2 is much larger, between 256KB to 2MB. L1 and L2 cache in modern processors is always on-die. On-die means it's part of the actual processor. L3 cache, if any, is usually on the motherboard and somewhere between the processor and the main system memory.