# Why is my L3 Cache Disabled?

## nukem996

When looking through dmidecode and lshw both report that my L3 cache is disabled. I have nothing set in my BIOS/EFI firmware to disable it. /sys/devices/cpu0/cache/level3 tells me its there but not if its used. I have an Intel i7 2600K which lists having 8M of L3 Cache. I've also tested with a Fedora 17 boot disk and see the same thing.

Anyone have any ideas?

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## Veldrin

what does lscpu say?

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## roarinelk

forget dmidecode, it's reading a static database the bios vendor created some aeons ago.

It's as reliably as a politician.

I really really doubt L3 cache is disabled if your cpu has it.  except for debugging the cpu

nobody would disable it willingly.

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## nukem996

 *Veldrin wrote:*   

> what does lscpu say?

 

```

Architecture:          x86_64

CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit

Byte Order:            Little Endian

CPU(s):                8

On-line CPU(s) list:   0-7

Thread(s) per core:    2

Core(s) per socket:    4

Socket(s):             1

NUMA node(s):          1

Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel

CPU family:            6

Model:                 42

Stepping:              7

CPU MHz:               3411.106

BogoMIPS:              6822.21

Virtualization:        VT-x

L1d cache:             32K

L1i cache:             32K

L2 cache:              256K

L3 cache:              8192K

NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-7

```

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## nukem996

 *roarinelk wrote:*   

> forget dmidecode, it's reading a static database the bios vendor created some aeons ago.
> 
> It's as reliably as a politician.
> 
> I really really doubt L3 cache is disabled if your cpu has it.  except for debugging the cpu
> ...

 

I've learned not to trust hardware manufactures. While this is most likely whats happening I was wondering if there was any way to verify that my L3 cache is enabled?

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