Athlon64 has 1mb of exclusive L2 cache which is faster than the P4s 512k of L2 cache and the P4EEs 2mb of inclusive L3 cache. The L3 cache is loading data from system ram and then the L2 (which is still 512k) is loading from the L3 cache. Where as the Athlon64s 1mb of L2 cache loads data directly from system memory.
The amount of cache isn't the only thing that matters. The way it's used makes a big difference too.
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