AMD's Sempron 3300+: 90nm Budget Computing
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 18, 2005 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Business/General Use Performance
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
- Microsoft Access 2002
- Microsoft Excel 2002
- Microsoft FrontPage 2002
- Microsoft Outlook 2002
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
- Microsoft Project 2002
- Microsoft Word 2002
- Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
- WinZip 8.1
The Sempron is a much stronger business performer than the Celeron D - that hasn't changed since we first looked at the Sempron. The 3300+ offers barely any performance improvement over the 3100+ however.
Office Productivity SYSMark 2004
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."
Once again, we see that the Sempron is stronger at business applications, but the 3300+ offers no real performance improvement over the 3100+.
The next test is Document Creation performance:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."
The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."
In the Data Analysis tests, the Celeron D actually outpaces the Sempron by a pretty good margin - just over 20%. The two Semprons perform identically, but it does show that the Celeron D can be quite competitive.
Mozilla 1.4
Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one that we pay the least amount of attention when it comes to performance. While a bit older than the core that is now used in Firefox, performance in Mozilla is worth looking at as many users are switching from IE to a much more capable browser on the PC - Firefox.
Mozilla has always favored architectures like the K8 and the Pentium M, so it is no surprise to see that the Sempron does a lot better than the Celeron D here.
ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0
ACDSee is a popular image editing tool that is great for basic image editing options such as batch resizing, rotating, cropping and other such features that are too elementary to justify purchasing something as powerful as Photoshop. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing.
Here, the Sempron 3300+ and the Celeron D offer basically identical performance.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
AtaStrumf - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
#28 overclockingoodnessMy point exactly!!! Someone with an AXP and a 6600GT looks at those charts and thinks: "Holy crap, I really gotta get me a S939 Athlon 3200", when in reality that would be a waste of his money, becasue his GPU would be the bottleneck and a S939 chip would not be able to do $h!t for him. That's why I think, it is important to run CPU game tests with a comparible GPU, otherwise the picture is seriously distorted!
The best thing to do, would be to run both sets of tests, because running just high end GPU tests is not telling the whole story. A VERY IMPORTANT PART is missing!
Because of tests like this, I don't really know how much of a bottleneck my Athlon 3200+ S754 is or is not, when coupled with my 6600GT. Should I primarily invest in a new CPU or a new GPU? Only if I get a new high end GPU, can I actually use tests like this to tell me if I should also get a new CPU or is that just a waste of my money?
GPU tests make this same mistake, by eliminating the CPU bottleneck, by using FX-55 and co. The problem is, that by doing so, they venture in unreal territory, with, for the most part, unrealistic CPU/GPU combos. Great for theory, not so great for practice!
nserra - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
I mean DUAL CORE READY.nserra - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
I think this review lacks Athlon 64 with socket 754. Unless Athlon 64 with that socket is dead?Even so is not right comparing a socket 939 with a socket 754 CPU.
AMD is doing great with this new CPUs, too bad they have a bad markting machine.
Right now if INTEL WAS AMD we were already having a campain saying DUAL CORE COMPATIBLE on socket 939 boards. But no ....
alangeering - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
can any reviewer give a guide as to which tests included SSE3 optimisations?This was not stated in the review.
Until the newer stepping of A64, many will not have SSE3, and so, in some media encoding tests you may have been able to show a difference between the A64 and the Semperon (in the semperon's favour).
I'm running an A64 3000 on S939, with no SSE3 support.
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
Tujan: The Lightscape benchmark comes as a portion of SPECviewperf 8.1. It is not a standalone application.Kristopher
karlreading - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
This reminds me a little of a few years back when a thunderbird cost barley more than a spitfire / morgan. made the duron have no market place. AMD should keep the sempron much more crippled than the a64, to give the sempron its market and protect high end a64 chips sales / status. either that or make the lower number a64's unavalible sooner, and replace them with sempys at higer numbers.karlos
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - link
Cool & Quiet only works for the Sempron 3000+ or higher. The socket 754 2600+ and 2800+ do not support it.cryptonomicon - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Man I wish there was an exciting TWIST In this article, oh well. Just looks like AMD looked to cut costs in the latest sempron and produce a more power/heat efficent processor, not much fancy :(Avalon - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Zebo, you know I work for stability :)Tujan - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Anybody Have a Link to the Program used here. To browse:"""Lightscape Viewset (light-07)
"The light-07 viewset was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the Lightscape Visualization System from Discreet Logic. Lightscape combines proprietary radiosity algorithms with a physically based lighting interface.
The most significant feature of Lightscape is its ability to simulate global illumination effects accurately by precalculating the diffuse energy distribution in an environment and storing the lighting distribution as part of the 3D model. """....
I looked at AutoDesk but 'Lightscape,is no longer supported/obsolete. Cant be the same program. thanks.