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AMD Releases Sempron Earlier Than Expected
I_am_Rambi writes "AMD has released the Sempron today, a release date that moved up from Aug 17th. Because of this move, some of the reviews that are out, will be continued later on. Some sites already have reviews including Toms Hardware, Anandtech, and Tech Report. The Sempron, AMDs budget processor, is staged against the Intel Celeron." Jason Jacobs writes with a review on Techware Labs, and Hack Jandy adds a link to a review at HotHardware, writing "it appears as though the Socket A based Sempron performs abysmally while dollar for dollar the Socket 754 version levels every Intel CPU."
It's been increasingly apparent that I wouldn't buy most CPUs today until they hit a minimum performance level. Until that "minimum" is something that's capable of running almost any app I throw at it.
While that's a moving target and always will be, at the moment what I'm running on it really begs for a CPU like these. And with them as a new low-end, I'm really set for an upgrade.
The last time I felt so excited by a speed upgrade was when I bought my first PPC Amiga. Good to see the IT world can keep on delivering.
Looks like AMD can really give Intel a beat down on the low end market now.
Will this finally force Dell to start selling AMD chips in their machines? I can't imagine they would be able to ignore the price and performance advantage.
Is it just me or are the processor names getting lamer and lamer.
What would you call your new processor if you were coming out with your own micro ??
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
80747 - would be nice to have processor as reliable as the other thing this name implies. *g* But to be serious: Giving processors numbers instead of names, let's the consumer focus on specs and not on pointless debates about the name per se.
Here's how it is:
Socket A: Athlon XPs and Semprons which are the same thing except with a different name.
Socket 754: Athlon 64 "value socket". It'll have A64s up to the 3700+, as well as some Semprons, which are A64s minus the 64-bit capability and half the cache (the latter of which has only a minor effect on performance).
Socket 939: Mainstream desktop socket. It'll have Athlon 64s for a while to come (4000+ and up). Dunno whether it'll have Semprons.
Socket 940: Highend socket. This is exclusively Opteron territory and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
As for technical differences between the A64 sockets, s754 has single channel memory while the other two have dual channel (which make them slightly faster, roughly the performance equivalent of 100MHz), and socket 940 requires ECC/Registered memory which is slower by roughly the same amount.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Socket 754 is an ATHLON-64 socket. The Sempron is NOT a 64 bit cpu, it is a 32 bit cpu using the 'hammer' bus. So it is sorta a cut down Athlon-64 rather than a cut down Athlon.
Put it another way, buy an Athlon64 MB and put an Athlon 32 cpu in it. WHY?
Put it another way, buy an Athlon64 MB and put an Athlon 32 cpu in it. WHY?
Sounds like a good upgrade path to me- Buy a socket754 mobo and a sempron, and later on down the road you can upgrade the memory and CPU and double your performance when you can afford it.
The 3700 is S754; the 3800 is S939. In a year's time I'd be more interested in a dual core chip than the top+end of line processor for my crummy cheapo transitional socket.