Sempron: the new Duron or Celeron arch-enemy

Z

ZionIFL

What is it with the Sempron?

I left the game when AMD were only offering AthlonXP xxxx+'s. Now there are
64bit CPU's, Socket A Sempron's, 64bit Semprons...

I'm about to build another PC - but I still dont know how effective the
Sempron is going to be. I want it to be good enough that once I upgrade, i'm
not going to be thinking: "I got played by the technology game".

Of course i'm on a budget, and that budget doesn't allow for a 64bit CPU -
but I want to know what the Sempron is capable of, and why I would want to
buy it...

Thanks in advance
 
D

David Maynard

ZionIFL said:
What is it with the Sempron?

I left the game when AMD were only offering AthlonXP xxxx+'s. Now there are
64bit CPU's, Socket A Sempron's, 64bit Semprons...

Close. There are socket 754 Semprons but they do not support the 64 bit
instruction set.
I'm about to build another PC - but I still dont know how effective the
Sempron is going to be. I want it to be good enough that once I upgrade, i'm
not going to be thinking: "I got played by the technology game".

Of course i'm on a budget, and that budget doesn't allow for a 64bit CPU -
but I want to know what the Sempron is capable of, and why I would want to
buy it...

Sempron is AMD's 'competitor' to Intel's Celeron, and it's rated that way.
In the Socket A form it's a relabeled XP rated at a higher speed because
it's competing against the Celeron instead of the P4, as the XP was
(meaning an XP 2200 is faster than a Sempron 2200). In Socket 754 it has
the on-die memory channel, like the 64 bit Athlon, but it doesn't have the
64 bit instruction set, and it's rating is, again, targeted against the
Celeron so a Sempron 3100 is not as fast as an Athlon 64 3100 (because the
Athlon rating is in comparison to the P4, which is faster than the Celeron
at the same clock speed).
 
T

Tweek

The socket 754 Semprons with 256k cache are pretty good. They give close to
the same 32-bit performance in many applications that an equivalent clocked
Athlon 64 does. I am typing this on an Emachines laptop with a 1.6 Ghz 256k
cache Sempron 2800+. This laptop cost me $600 with 512MB and 60GB and it
peforms very well. The only real bad thing about both the Socket A and
Socket 754 Semprons is the boards are pretty much an upgrade dead end. If
you go S754 though, you may be able to upgrade to a faster Athlon 64 later
if they are still available. I do not think that AMD is going to make any
newer Athlon 64's for the S754 platform though (no new cores). I prefer AMD
myself, but if you are looking for upgradability, a Socket T (LGA775) board
with a Celeron D may be a good choice. The Celeron D (533fsb) is a much
better performer than the original S478 Celeron with 400fsb and 128k cache.
You would be able to upgrade to a P4 later.
 
B

BarryNL

Craig said:
The semperon is to the athlon xp what the celeron is to the pentium.

Hardly. The Socket A Sempron's are basically Athlon XPs with reduced L2
cache, and are rated against Celerons instead of Pentiums. Eg, the
Sempron 2400 is an XP2000+ but with less cache but a higher FSB (333
instead of 266).

Similarly, the 754 Semprons are basically Athlon 64s with the 64 bit
capability disabled.

Having said that, I wouldn't build a new system around a Socket A
processor now because the upgrade potential is minimal - we may already
be seeing the last socket A processors. The 754 is a bit more future proof.
 
C

Craig Palme

BarryNL said:
Hardly. The Socket A Sempron's are basically Athlon XPs with reduced L2
cache, and are rated against Celerons instead of Pentiums. Eg, the
Sempron 2400 is an XP2000+ but with less cache but a higher FSB (333
instead of 266).

Similarly, the 754 Semprons are basically Athlon 64s with the 64 bit
capability disabled.

Having said that, I wouldn't build a new system around a Socket A
processor now because the upgrade potential is minimal - we may already
be seeing the last socket A processors. The 754 is a bit more future proof.

You might want to reconsider that since AMD is going to stop supporting the
754 socket and stick with the 939. The 940 will be contiuned but only in
server configurations.

Secondly the Celeron is a stipped down pentium as you pointed out with the
Semperon comparison to the AthlonXP. Which was my point. I didn't say the
celeron was better than the semperon.

And as a final thought. What do you plan to do with your 754 AMD system that
doesn't support DDR2 Ram or the faster bandwidth of the PCI-Express video
cards. Have you considered the requirement of the 3-D graphics of Longhorn?
:)
 

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