Past-proof PC?

[Gamevet]

The L2 cache (along with L1) is pretty critical to any x86 CPU. Try disabling them sometime, the CPU will be utterly crippled.

I'm well aware of that. My i5-2500k only has 6MB of L3 catch, compared to the i7-2600k's 8 MB. My Q9650 has 12MB of L2 catch compared to the Q6600's 8MB and will perform better than the Q6600 at the same clock speed, but the Q6600 was still no slouch.

That Celeron I have performs somewhere between a P3 and a P4. There were older Pentium 4s that had as little L2 catch as that Celeron. It was good enough to run the likes of Halo and Star Wars: Empire at War with an FX5200 Ultra. It wasn't a gimped as a lot of those Celerons were, especially the laptop versions, but the laptop Pentium M was gimped as well.