CPU Cache Memory

When it comes to computer memory, you might think of stuff like VRAM on your graphics card or, more likely, hard drives and SSDs, but there's another form of memory that's amazingly fast and crucial to the speed that we've come to expect from modern computers. Yeah! that's Cache memory.

A CPU cache is a form of memory that is built into your processor.

But why does your processor need its own memory? Wouldn't 16,8 or 4 gigabytes of ram or whatever else you have in your machine suffice?

To be frank, those RAM modules are much faster than a hard drive in terms of data transfer, but your CPU needs data much faster than your Ram can provide it, and as CPUs have gotten faster over the years, they have continued to outstrip traditional Ram modules.

Without faster memory, your CPU can sit idle as it waits for RAM, causing you to lose time.

As a result, cache comes into play...Unlike system memory, which is made up of dynamic RAM or DRAM, the CPU cache is made up of static RAM or SRAM, which is more expensive and takes up more space but is much faster than DRAM because it does not need to be refreshed as frequently to hold data as DRAM does.

When a CPU accesses something from your main system RAM, it usually saves it in its cache and then uses complicated algorithms to guess what other instructions or data it may need next, which it often fetches from your system RAM because these guesses aren't always right. Cache misses occur when the CPU scans its own cache and is unable to locate it, forcing it to access the device memory directly, which slows things down.

Modern processors, on the other hand, have gotten pretty good at choosing what to place in their caches, with a cache hit rate of more than 80%, implying that the CPU is only processing what it finds in cache and doesn't need to talk to your slower device memory at all. As a result, having more cache is preferable, so keep that in mind when shopping for a processor.

Higher-end modules have a few extra megabytes of level 3 or l3 cache built-in.

Levels 1 and 2 are smaller, faster sections of the cache that your Processor can try to access before searching your level 3 cache for data.

Will a better cache result in a higher FPS in games?

This depends on the use, however, larger caches will improve performance. Fortunately, if you're buying a higher-end processor because you need more cores, higher IPCs, or better-overclocking capacity in general, it'll almost certainly come with more cache.