AMD Sempron: A Fresh Take on Budget Computing
by Derek Wilson on July 28, 2004 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
In looking at our performance comparison, we want to pay attention to 3 different things: how the new Sempron parts do in comparison to Intel's budget line, how the K7 Sempron does against Athlon XP processors, and how the K8 Sempron does against other Athlon 64 processors in 32-bit mode.We only had time to benchmark a few new numbers, so the Athlon 64 that we chose was the 2800+ with the same clock speed and twice the L2 cache.
We used the same platforms in which we tested our Celeron D comparison last month. It is useful to note that we couldn't boot the Sempron on our usual VIA K8T800 based CPU test platform. AMD indicates that there shouldn't be any problems with the new chip booting in current boards, but that some manufacturers are working on BIOS updates that will fix this problem that we had. So this time around, we used a Gigabyte nForce3 250 board.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Sempron 2800+ (Socket A) AMD Sempron 3100+ (Socket 754) AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Intel Celeron D 335 (2.8GHz) Intel Celeron D 330 (2.66GHz) Intel Celeron D 325 (2.53GHz) Intel Celeron 2.6GHz Intel Celeron 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 2600+ AMD Athlon XP 2500+ AMD Athlon XP 2400+ AMD Athlon XP 2200+ AMD Athlon XP 1700+ AMD Duron 1.6GHz |
| RAM: | 2 x 256MB DDR400 @ 2:3:3:6 |
| Hard Drive(s): | 2 x Western Digital Special Edition 80GB |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel Chipset Driver 5.00.1009 ForceWare 3.13 nForce Driver |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256 |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 3.9 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | ASUS A7N8X (Socket A) Gigabyte K8 Triton (Socket 754) ABit IS7 (Intel 865) |
Thanks to our new and improved graphing engine, our CPU articles will be a little easier to read with green for AMD, blue for Intel, and orange for the processors on which our review focuses. Our graphs will also be a little bit bigger to accommodate large data sets.
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Lonyo - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
No edit feature on comments?Also, you can get an 865 for $56 at Newegg (new, ASRock "P4I65GV" i865GV Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU -RETAIL)
So that means that the gap between systems is really only going to be $17 between a Sempron 2800+ system and a Celeron 335 system.
Lonyo - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Another point, the Sempron prices you quote are in 1000 unit quantities, so on the penultimate page, there is no point if comparing the cost of a system, unless you remember that the Sempron will be $10~$15 more expensive than the price you quote.Celeron 335 is $117 in 1000 unit quantities (on launch) and $127 at Newegg.
The Sempron will probably also be $10 more than the 1000 unit price.
Lonyo - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Pages 9 and 10 both make reference to the Celeron 225.I think this may be a typo for 335, as there is no 225 in the review ;)
Calin - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
I was thinking - what is the electrical power (in relation with the other Athlons)? I am somewhat interested in a small and silent computer (socketA based) , and I would like to know which of those processons would be the happiest in crammed conditionsCalin
clarkey01 - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
DerekWilson, yeah any chance you could have an 2.4Ghz Sempron going against a celeron @ The same speed.sandorski - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
I might get one when they come out for Socket 939, just because of cost issues. The SocketA versions certainly sucks when compared to the 754 version and with the limited future for Socket 754 there's nothing tempting for me.Spacecomber - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
I assume that the overclocking write-up will include the new Celerons, since I think that was skimmed over in the article covering their launch.When discussing the value of the new Celerons (assuming the this will be part of the overclocking write-up), backward compatability with older chipset motherboards would be helpful, too (e.g., 845E).
I mentioned this in my comments to the Celeron write-up; so, my apologies for being repetitive.
Stlr23 - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Sempron huh?.....Nice.LeeBear - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
One 'budget' chip you didn't include in the roundup is the 2.4A Pentium 4 (Prescott, FSB533, 1MB Cache). It's cheaper then the Celeron 335 and with overclocking it may provide some interesting results.-LeeBear
DerekWilson - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
We will be working on the overclock article over the next couple days -- is there anything you guys would particularly like to see?