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.
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johnsonx - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
AMD's web site implies that Cool'n'Quiet works with S754 Semprons (for example when you click on downloads for the Sempron processors, you get several revisions of the AMD cpu driver that claim to enable Cool'n'Quiet). However I've tried enabling it on a couple of S2600's, and have had no luck. I had no trouble getting it to work on my A64 2800+, so I assume that Semprons in fact do have cool'n'quiet disabled.I think this is stupid of course, but my opinion of what's stupid obviously carries little weight with AMD...
randomman - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Nitpick: Xvid isn't at Version 5 - the lastest stable is 1.0 and beta is at 1.1. Which is it?Jep4444 - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Palermo which is based off of VeniceAsiLuc - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Is this the Venice or the Winchester core?Jep4444 - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
beat me to it eBauer, the A64 2800+ really should have been tested(ive yet to see anyone use one in a comparison versus the Sempron 3300+ yet which has been annoying me)overclockingoodness - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
#19 AtaStrumf:"As for X800XT distorting the gaming value CPU picture, I think this is something worth thinking about. Maybe you should include a test with a 6600GT, just to see if a more expensive CPU, coupled with a value graphics card actually makes any difference."
Uh, that doesn't make any sense. You won't be able to compare the high-end and low-end chips since they will perform identially on the mid-end graphics solutions. Regardless of how fast the FX55 is, when you add that with a 6600GT - the performance will degrade. Besides, all high end chips will perform almost exactly the same because GPU will be the bottleneck.
What part of bottleneck do you guys not get?
Zebo - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Those complaining about overclocks...as usual YMMV, don't take one site as gospel, all chips clock differently. Best resource to get an accurate representation is internet forums to get a cross section of the pioneers who took the chance for y'all. Another thing to keep in mind is Anandtech is'nt xtremesystems, they use safe low volts, and go for real stability, basically your average guy type overclock not screenshot overclocks.Zebo - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
Makes you wonder what an AMD FX with 2MB lvl2 Cache would do???eBauer - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
I would have liked to see a A64 2800+ thrown into a mix, especially considering it shares roughly the same price as the new sempron 3300+.Including the 2800+ would have given readers a clear view on why the 3000/3200 939 cpus had the advantage (if it were due to the 512k cache, dual channel memory, or a combination of the two)
Avalon - Monday, April 18, 2005 - link
My sempy 2800+ did 2.72ghz on 1.55v, so Anand must have gotten a real dud of a chip. Also, to those wondering about HTPC applications for this chip. I'm pretty positive that CnQ is disabled for semprons, and only available for the A64 line. I've been starting to realize more and more that dual channel is really beneficial to gaming on the K8 platform. There really does seem to be no reason to grab a s754 Sempron anymore, since they don't offer any significant price savings. I'm still glad I got to play with one, but I'll be much happier with a dual channel Venice.