AMD Sempron: A Fresh Take on Budget Computing
by Derek Wilson on July 28, 2004 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Two Flavors are Better than One: Socket A
First in line today is the socket A Sempron based on the K7 architecture.
Socket A Sempron 2800+
If the familiar rectangular shape of the core looks a little too familiar, that's probably for very good reason. The K7 Sempron is actually a 166MHz FSB 256KB Thoroughbred-B core.
Sempron's Secret
Upon first learning this, we were a little worried that we would see overlapping parts where new Semprons would actually be old Athlon XPs. Fortunately, this is not the case.
The slowest Athlon XP 166MHz FSB Thoroughbred-B was the 2600+ with a 12.5 multiplier (2.083GHz core clock). The highest K7 Sempron clock speed is 2GHz with a 12 multiplier.
What this does mean is that higher model numbered Semprons will be slower than "equivalent" Athlon XP processors. This does make a little bit of sense in that Sempron denotes a budget processor, which will be slower than the mainstream line. This is the same type of thing that we see when looking at a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 versus a 2.8GHz Celeron. They have the same "speed", but different performance.
In our opinion, this is a problem with marketing by clock speed, and we are disappointed to see AMD recreating a problem with artificial model numbers. So now, we have 4 different 2800+ CPUs (AXP Barton, AXP Tbred, Sempron Tbred, A64 Newcastle) and really no reason why this situation should have to exist. Hopefully, future model numbering plans will be better able to handle situations such as this.
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bupkus - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
As #12 points out, power consumption and heat generation are concerns as "all onboard" mainboards lean me to MicroATX and SFF in my future builds.Falloutboy - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
sweet might be making a switch to a sempron 3100 soon....might be nice in your overclocking matchup to compare them to the the mobile bartons in terms of performance. i'm curious how my 2.5ghz barton compares to say a semperon running at 2.0-2.2ghz
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
P.S. Is the Sempron 3100+ multiplier-locked? As some mentioned, overclocking capabilities would be good to know. :)LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Personally, I'd like to see how the Sempron 3100+ compares with the Athlon XP 3200+. Plenty of folks are on the edge about whether to hang on to their Socket A mainboard through one more upgrade, or bite the bullet. As I just bought an Athlon XP-M and have it running stably at 2.4GHz (12 x 200), which would probably equate to about Athlon XP 3300-3400 speeds if one existed, I'd like to know if the advanced memory controller would be worth my while, or if I might as well wait until the Athlon 64 platform becomes more mature and Socket 939 CPU prices come down.thebluesgnr - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
#18,I never said you can't buy AMD boards in the $40 range. I simply pointed out an error in the article. The only fanboy-like posting here is yours.
btw, it would be very hard for me to be an Intel fanboy when my main rig is powered by XP-Mobile 2400+ and my home file server is an Athlon 700MHz.
RyanVM - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
If you're planning on upgrading your DivX version to support SSE3 anyway, you might as well go straight to 5.2 and wipe the slate clean.ViRGE - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
#11, what would be the point of comparing them at equal clock speeds? The Sempron has the IPC advantage, so it would just blow the Celeron out of the water.Marlin1975 - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
OMG I love it when all the fanboys come out.Yea and there are AMD boards in the $40 range also, etc... So stop whinning.
The Sempron is faster and cheaper then a Celeron, get over it.
thebluesgnr - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
ECS 865PE-A is $46 shipped on newegg, and it has SATA.Really, the Price/Performance analysis should be redone considering there's not a $20 delta between AMD and Intel mobos, and the Sempron 2800+ should be compared to the Celeron D 330. Not to mention the difference in retail / 1000 units prices, like #14 mentioned.
Resh - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
When will these be available @ retail?