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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Pumpkinierre - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Good to see the loss of cache having little effect. From 1Mb to 256K of L2 there would be barely 5% loss in overall performance even in cache biased demos and benchmarks and probably less in real gaming. 256K of L2 is right on the money, all that is needed is the S939 flavor with the dualmemory channel and a lasting socket. The a64 will show its true colours in data streaming activities once software is written or compiled for it rather than P4 biased software. cant wait to see the overclock.Zebo - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Looks like there's going to hardly a difference between a Celeron 335 and Sempron 2800+.---------------
Comparing the top celeron to middle of the road athlon on a old socket A? Comparing a more expensive celeron to a less expensive sempron...
Hardly equitable. Look at the benches comaring competing processors. The 3100+ scores a, to use your words, 'WE PWNED INT3L OMG!!!' victory of 20+ % almost accross the board.;)
ncage - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
the overall value comes in upgradability. You can buy a socket 754 mb + sempron processor and be able to upgrade to an amd 64 chipset without upgrading your mb. So i think its awesomebearxor - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
I don't know...Looks like there's going to hardly a difference between a Celeron 335 and Sempron 2800+.
I don't think anyone could sit in front of either of these processors and tell a real-world difference.
While this looks like a victory for AMD, I think its really slim victory and not much of a 'WE PWNED INT3L OMG!!!' victory.
No doubt the overall cost of the Intel system will be higher, but will it matter for OEM's like Gateway/Compaq, etc?
I imagine we'll see systems using both from most manufacturers but the only downfall I see here is that regardless of which system you choose, you're already outdated with a very minimal upgrade path.
Zebo - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Awesome!