Pentium CPU and cache querry

Hi pepole's

Can someone inform me which of the Pentium CPU's has the best or most amount of cache.
I am thinking of building up an older single core box from the ground up and using a P4 around 2.8 3.0+GHZ...but there are so many variants...

It's either that - OR if these are a similar price or P4's not a "good bang for your buck" so to speak then possibly of getting an AMD dual core of some description. Based on the dollar / performance value.

I have no components to speak of at this stage so there are no restrictions - just want a high end thinking single core sytem to play older games from about 2+ years ago..theres enough cool older games out there to warrant this, and with the price being cheaper now for the older hardware should be able to get hundreds of hours worth of pixel mashing from a high end older unit...at least that is the intent..

Thoughts and info is very much appreciated.wave

 

AMD is a little better then Intel i think i am useing a intel Pentium (R) 4
it runs pretty good i can overclock it quite a bit.AMD heck i had an older home build computer that had a 1.2Ghz Amd in it ran really good better.I would probley go with AMD but it's really your choice.Heck i saw a 3.2Athlon AMD on Newegg.com that's pretty darn fast.

 

Why do you need an older system to play older games? Why not just play the older games on a new PC using compatibility mode?

 

Thanks Xcom46,

I have usually stuck with Amd (price conscious) I still have an old duron 1.3Ghz from about 6 years back that just doesnt let me down (touch wood). I understand that pentiums took over the speed test ratings (at least a friend tells me so) when pentiums got to the 2.8 or 3Ghz + range although i had a look and theres about 14 or 17 variants of P4's and the cahce is the important thing next to raw clock speed. :cool

So, I want to try out a second hand mobo - hopefully without the crapacitor older mobo issue, was thinking P4 as havent "played" much with P4's, other than at work and thats just "9-5" no overclocking etc...have an older winfast Fx5900 golden sample AGP card that is pretty quick and has some nice overclocking features that i thought i might have a lash at.


All this really just to see how fast I can get my old favourite games going...and some that I had to stop playing, although i was enjoying because the frame rate dropped and didnt do the game justice:cry, when things gots a bit intense..eg Halo 1 from about the mission where you rescue the crashed guys...far cry thats a visually lush game one of the best of its time still havent fin that about 80% the way through etc...

anyways must dash its friday 7.40pm my time.. yay! L8r world:wave

 

Thanks for the input Collinsl,:wave

I am aware of the compatability mode:cool, although have had an issue with XP Pro and a wow.exe file, (not the virus which can infect this file either) as it switches between 16bit and 32bit modes as best as i can understand, for those old win 95 / 98 games. For some reason it doesnt switch back or had difficulty and I'd find my newer games had issues when trying to play this caused a lot of "fun" at the time.

So the intent is to have a dual boot 98 / Xp pro (a single core) running as fast as possible with about 512mb of DDR 400 ram because thats all 98 will use and thats the amount I have / could use from an older unit. But thanks for the input