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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abrogard - Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - link
I think there's something should sweep through the internet: Clearly labelling the country of origin of your site! It's not clear which country we are in, often, and therefore what money we're talking.
Followed by clearly dating the page.
abrogard@yahoo.com
:)
cleanjew - Friday, January 14, 2005 - link
Hi, can someone tell me if it would be a good idea to buy a computer running an amd sepron 3000+, i would be using it to run mid range games, and i would like to use internet and productivity software at a fast speed. Do you also think it would be faster than a celeron and comparable to a p4?Thanks
If you want you could email me at jewish-mexican@charter.net
trexpesto - Saturday, August 21, 2004 - link
I just got a Shuttle AN35N and retail TBred 2700+ for ~119 incl. shipping and tax, on sale at outpost.Sparrow - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
But in the test he say's that the extra 83 MHz make the difference !!!Jens
coldpower27 - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
I am guessing Anandtech was using the Barton based 2600+, you know the one with 1.92GHZ/333FSB.Sparrow - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
???? If a Sempron 2800+ is a Thoroughbred (166*12) and the xp 2600+ is a Thoroughbred (166*12.5) why can the Sempron be faster in some test's ? an error or are there some changes in memory speed ????? !!!!!!Jens
MAME - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
awesome AMD, just awesomethis chip is very nice
coldpower27 - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
Hey Trogdor, notice I can post here now too:)Anyway, just to sum up I would like to see these processor as well.
Athlon XP-M Barton @ 2.3,2.4,2.5 using 200x11.5, 200x12, 200x12.5
Celeron Northwood-128
2.4,2.5,2.6,2.7,2.8
Celeron Prescott-256
2.4,2.53,2.66,2.8
Duron Applebred
1.4,1.8
Pentium 4 Northwood, Prescott
2.8 with FSB800
Zebo - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
oh LOL:)TrogdorJW - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
Woah, KF... that was a whole lot of stuff to post, quite a bit of it rather unrelated. You must have even more free time than me! ;)Zebo, you apparently missed the point completely: "The overlapping Athlon FX, Athlon 64, and now Sempron names is going to really cause confusion among the *less-informed* public." The less-informed public doesn't include anyone reading hardware sites or OC forums. Yeah, Sempron is the value system meant to compete with Celeron, but both AMD and Intel are happy to sell lots of slower, "crippled" chips to the uninformed buyers. The 2.8 GHz Celeron chips were absolutely terrible performers - about as fast as a P4 1.8 or 2.0 - but Intel was more than happy to dupe people into purchasing those with their high clockspeed. The Celeron D is better, but the tactic remains the same. AMD is now joining them, calling lesser processors "3100+" and "2800+" and leaving it to the salespeople.
You don't think there are going to be plenty of salespeople pushing these systems with claims like "the Sempron 2800+ is basically just as fast as a 2.8 GHz chip, and the only difference between it and the Athlon 64 2800+ is the lack of 64-bit support, which really isn't needed anyway"? In sales, it's a lot more important to get a sale than to get a big sale. They'll shoot for the big sales if possible, but when someone wants a cheap system, they'll talk up the Sempron (and/or Celeron) as though it's just as good as a more expensive Athlon64/Pentium4.
That's what I meant when I said it's creating confusion, and that the confusion is likely to be an intended consequence. Car manufacturers do the same thing: you don't want an informed purchaser coming in to buy a car! You want the salesman to have the advantage, so that they can get the buyer into *any* Ford, Chevy, Honda, etc. and keep them from going to a different store.
Most PC shos (and car dealerships) make a set amount of money off of a sale, because the hard drives, case, monitor, RAM, etc. all have markups. So if someone buys a computer, the shop makes at least $100. $100 on a $500 computer is a good return. If they buy a $1000 computer, they might make $150 to $200. Granted, on the "luxury" computer systems that cost over $2000, they'll make a killing, but those are hardly ever sold.