Three Budget CPUs Tested

Steve writes "HEXUS.net are taking a look at three 'value' CPUs. The Sempron 2800+ and 3100+ from AMD (Socket A and Socket 754 respectively.) The price range of the three is fairly broad, the 3100+ coming out on top, also costing the most. Also, for those of you who enjoy cheap thrills, some overclocking has been thrown in, too." (The third chip reviewed is the Celeron D.)

Comments

Let's just hope

[Anonymous Coward]

That their web server isn't being hosted on one.

Re:Let's just hope

[Penguinoflight]

Insightful, more than funny. Just take a look at the street prices for these processors, and compare to Athlons... You'll find the faster Athlons are cheaper in the same mhz rating. Add in double the cache on Athlon, and you'd have to be an idiot to buy a "budget" cpu.

Re:Let's just hope

[KennyP]

Who knows... These might bring blade computing down to a more realistic price. Imagine cheap clusters - cheap enough to run at home for the high end enthusiast.

Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s

Re:Let's just hope

[Glonoinha]

I have a cheap cluster at home.
Now the question is WTF do I do with it? (Details in sig)

Re:Let's just hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Rent it out to Gentoo compilers that use distcc.

Re:Let's just hope

[Zakabog]

As a person who builds a lot of computers, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. The street prices for these processors are lower than the 512K cache versions with the same clock speeds. I buy these for all of my budget computers (anything under $600.)

Re:Let's just hope

[Daengbo]

Well, considering that the Celeron (US$75) and the Sempron 2800+ ($US75) cost the same, but the Celeron beat the cheaper of the two AMD offerings fairly regularly, does that now make Intel the new Price / Performance leader? Amd has held that spot for years now...

Re:Let's just hope

[Anonymous Coward]

"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14

Who is this "we" that you speak of. Have you seen the Father, or even the son?

No? then to what are you testifying?

cracksmokers..
*shakes head*

Re:Let's just hope

[Penguinoflight]

Oh, you know it wouldn't be in the _word_ unless it was true.

John was one of the disciples who knew Jesus, most of even anti-christian speculation puts disciples very close to Jesus.

I try to add a little of my beliefs to my posts by way of this sig. The rest of my posts are usually objective, so I try to show people some of my perspective.

Let me be the first one to say

[Anonymous Coward]

sempron fi

Re:Let me be the first one to say

[ScrewMaster]

Semper ubi sub ubi

Re:Let me be the first one to say

[sploo22]

It took me a second to figure it out, but that was a brilliant joke. :)

Re:Let me be the first one to say

[piovere]

short for "Sempron Faithful?"

Re:Let me be the first one to say

[Saeger]

"Would you like Sem Pr0n?"

--

Re:Let me be the first one to say

[Trailwalker]

Found here: #user/laundry-bin/underware

Better link

[Anonymous Coward]

..to their more comfortable print version.

Re:Better link

[Anonymous Coward]

You are implicitly obligated to see the ads! Thief!

I might check those out

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't do any scientific computing or anything involving too much math... if these CPUs make a few mistakes here or there it won't really bother me.

Re:I might check those out

[ImaLamer]

I don't do any scientific computing or anything involving too much math... if these CPUs make a few mistakes here or there it won't really bother me.

What!?!

I hope that was a joke...

Everything you do on the computer requires "math" to be done.

Re:I might check those out

[kai.chan]

I don't think a typical Joe knows how to stumble onto Slashdot, let alone know how to post a reply and make a statement that is the exact opposite of what is true.

Re:I might check those out

[schpmock]

I would guess that the grandparent was refering to Intel's statement about the Pentium Floating Point Division Bug; only those who really needed to divide floating point numbers with precision would get get a replacement processor...

Re:I might check those out

[ScrewMaster]

Q: What do you call the "Intel Inside" sticker?

A: A warning label.

Re:I might check those out

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am pentium of borg. Resistance is futile. You will be approximated."

Q: How do you pronounce IEEE as in the IEEE floating point standard whilest fyling on a plane designed on a pentium?
A: Aiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

And so on and so forth.

Re:I might check those out

[Wog]

*sigh*

Get it right.

"I am Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated."

Re:I might check those out

[mdpye]

PENTIUM: Produces Erroneous Numbers Through Incorrect Understanding of Mathematics

Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[ShatteredDream]

I recently bought a PC from Compaq for only $445 including free s&h and it has a a Sempron 2800. I got it as a replacement for my AthlonXP 2400+ box which had its motherboard die, and I needed a drop in replacement for my CS classes to run Linux on and the PC works like a charm. It's fast, it runs SuSE 9.1 well and was dirt cheap compared to the Intel alternative.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[Ianoo]

Why did you buy an entirely new PC and not just a new motherboard?

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[toddestan]

Why did you buy an entirely new PC and not just a new motherboard?

Even a bigger question, why a Compaq?

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[mixmasta]

read the first sentence again to find your answer. =)

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[bhtooefr]

For $445? I could build a Sempron 2800+ for less than $445, and with quality components (unless that came with a monitor...)

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[ak3ldama]

probably because his first computer was a compaq(i have no proof, but it's a good guess)

a budy of mine bought a dell, even though i and others told him not to. his power supply went out during warranty, got a new one. his power supply went out again, but this time he wasn't under the warranty any more. he couldn't drop a normal power supply in, because the locations were different and he would have to cut some metal. so he purchased a new case. the motherboard also had to be replaced as his old motherboard wasn't atx. he decided to buy a new sound card since his sound blaster live was proprietary. he also had to buy new ram, but that is because his old motherboard was rdram, not really a big issue, just sold the rdram to a friend.

anyways, when people buy these boxes that big companies like compaq, dell, hp, etc put together, they have little control of the components. thus when something dies they often have to buy an entirely new pc, and not just an individual component.

that's just my point of view, i have always built my own boxes, of course your experience may vary. i have seen some very good mass production boxes, but that was years ago when gateway made sweet pentium mmx/pentium II stuff.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[Naffer]

What kind of Rdram using motherboard isn't ATX? I haven't seen a non-ATX case in years. Hell, my P233MMX was ATX.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[ak3ldama]

It's just that the board wasn't able to be screwed into the new case, as the Dell had different thread locations.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Mine wasn't. It was an HP Pavilon. Not ATX.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[suckmysav]

Almost none of the big name brands use a standard ATX layout. They want to discourage you from pulling their stuff apart and putting new parts in. If they could figure a way to make hard drives and CPU's "different" without it costing them too much to do so they would, I assure you.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[bob beta]

They want to discourage you from pulling their stuff apart and putting new parts in.

Umm, they also can save money and design a tighter, smaller system, by not designing it to fit any Taiwanese garbage out there on the market.

I used to be absolutely zealous about no 'proprietary footprint' cases in my house. I got over it about the time I stopped having to worry about walking on loose phillips screws with my bare feet.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[suckmysav]

Maybe they do make smaller, cheaper PC's, but to be quite honest on the odd occasion where I have looked inside of name brand PC's, I have usually been struck by the bigger than usual motherboards they have in them. It's been a few years since the last time I looked in one, so I don't doubt that they are wanting to make smaller PC's these days, but then that is what I thought miniATX boards were for.

The fact is it would be cheaper for them to use off the shelf Tiawanese motherboards, but they don't want to do that because then they wouldn't be any different than all the other white box assemblers out there, albeit with a fancier looking case perhaps.

I can certainly understand why they want to differentiate themselves from the pack, and why they don't want to become just another white box assembler. From their perspective it is a good business decision, pure and simple.

From my perspective however, I prefer to assemble my own white boxen. Isn't choice a wonderful thing?

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[dontbgay]

AMEN.. I do computer repairs as a hobby of mine and my boss had a Gateway. The motherboard and processor shat themselves and it was up to me to fix it. Turns out, I had to dremel the peripherals out and leave some screws out of the mobo. It runs like a champ now, though.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[Bull999999]

a budy of mine bought a dell, even though i and others told him not to. his power supply went out during warranty, got a new one. his power supply went out again, but this time he wasn't under the warranty any more. he couldn't drop a normal power supply in, because the locations were different and he would have to cut some metal. so he purchased a new case.

Same exact thing happend to my sister-in-law's dell. Her power supply went out right after the warrenty expired. I bought a standard powersupply for her but I didn't quite line up. She was tight on money so she told me to go ahead and do some cutting.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[essreenim]

I went for the slightly more expensive Athlon64 s754 3000+ - maybe not better value than a Sempron, but blows a celeron away in every department, specially since its running with a s-ata disk and 800mhz via K8T800 chipset. AMD are far superior at the moment. I get 50 mb/s out of my s-ata on Slackware 10.0!!

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[hemanman]

They do that on their servers, making special cooling plates, and "CPU Modules" that is a special extra module that you plug in a socket next to the CPU. That way, you can't put in a standard CPU, but have to buy the overpriced spare part from the vendor, sometimes at 3-4 times the marked price.

-H

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[Anonymous Coward]

How long ago was this, a decade? AFAIK Dell is now ATX compatible, at the very least their PSUs are. And yeah, building your own comp can be cheaper and "better", but most people dont have the skills or knowledge to build a reliable home-brew computer.

Just ask my friend whose comp stopped working. I took a look at it and the mobo isnt secured in the case, the PSU is a crap-brand and inadequate for the machine, the case is painfully bad, the system runs too hot, just a huge list of problems. He would have been WAY better off buying a (modern) Dell system for an extra 50 or 100$ that has a great case, very cool, very quiet, and very WORKS.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[suckmysav]

Good point. In fact that reminds me that i have a Compaq ProLiant server here with hotswap SCSI drives which don't have the usual scsi connector on them (I am talking about the actuall HDD found inside the "hot swap module". I remember I had to replace a drive and could only get one by calling HP. I think the CPU modules in that are as you describe.

Re:Sempron 2800 does kick ass

[hemanman]

Actually, you can disassamble the Compaq hot swap casing, and replace the drive with a standard SCSI drive, with a 80 pins SCA connector :-)

Voids your warrenty, but on older machines it's a sure hit ;-)

-H

Would be great for something like MythTv, etc

[Prophetic_Truth]

low priced x86 cpu/mobo/mem combos are great "extra" boxes. Something like a car pc, or mythtv, or a mp3 box like outlined in this recent story, a MAME arcade, home automation, kitchen pc, toliet pc (slashdot from the throne), asterisk pbx, the list goes on and on.

Athalon 64's

[d3ity]

Now here, I'm a hardcore AMD user, I have 5 of thier athlon xp's sitting in various forms in my house. Now what is all this business about having an Athlon 64 that does not have 64 bit capability. I just dont get it. Wouldnt an athlon 64 without 64 bit capability be an athlon XP with a new core and new socket?

Re:Athalon 64's

[Lord Kano]

Wouldnt an athlon 64 without 64 bit capability be an athlon XP with a new core and new socket?

Yes.

One of my buddies has an Athlon 64 3000+, it runs 32bit code at roughly the same speed as my Athlon XP 2800+. Unless it's just keeping an eye cast toward the future so that they can crank up the speed, I don't get why it's important to move to the new core either.

LK

Re:Athalon 64's

[leathered]

The Socket 754 Sempron has very little in common with the Athlon XP. Two notable differences are the on-die memory controller and the no-excecute (nx) protection from buffer overflows.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Wiz]

Not really, the Opteron core is better than the Athlon core. If you exclude the 64-bitness, you've still got:

1. SSE2.
2. On-board memory controller.
3. Higher IPC vs the Athlon.
4. Hyper-transport.

Remember, the Opteron is the next-gen core so it is a lot better anyway. Removing the 64-bit part is only one part, the rest is still excellent.

Of course, not as if Windows even has a 64-bit OS yet which is what matters for a lot of people (not me tho).

Re:Athalon 64's

[dreamchaser]

It's cheaper to have your fabs only have to worry about one core.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Brian_Warner]

Wouldnt an athlon 64 without 64 bit capability be an athlon XP with a new core and new socket?

Yeah, just like how a pentium 4 is like a pentium 2 with a new core and new socket... I'm not sure I get your point, the core is completely different, what more do you want?

Re:Athalon 64's

[Toraz Chryx]

1. That's something that could have been added to an AthlonXP, it's utilising the existing FP pathways just as SSE1 does on the AthlonXP whilst the Tbird athlon didn't have SSE at all.
2. That's the big DING DING DING, the lower memory latency plumbed into what is largely the same architecture makes a hugeass difference.
3. That's due to the on die memory controller more than anything.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Gothmolly]

It's "Athlon", you idiot.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Jedi Alec]

there's tons of benchmarks out there that say otherwise. so AMD has paid each and every one of those websites to display fake results...judging from both benchmarks online an rl experiences from friends who already have an Athlon 64, it is definitely faster than an XP in the same MHz rating with increases of up to 30% when doing for example heavy duty gaming.

Re:Athalon 64's

[ScrewMaster]

You're in the wrong thread. We're discussing Olympic events here.

Re:Athalon 64's

[endx7]

Of course, not as if Windows even has a 64-bit OS yet which is what matters for a lot of people (not me tho).

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluat ion/upgrade.mspx

It's probably shit and I wouldn't run it (well, as a general rule I don't run windows at all), but it's available. It's only available as trial version, but it's for a year, and if you're running windows the chances are favorable you're gonna wipe your system and reinstall in about a year anyway. :/

(Actually, it wouldn't suprise me if only a small portion of the system was actual 64bit (like the kernel). Utilities like notepad are probably still 32bit.)

Re:Athalon 64's

[Jedi Alec]

oops, make that *unless* AMD has paid....

serves me right for posting after all that scotch :/

Re:Athalon 64's

[Sexy Bern]

I'm on Glen Moray - you?

Re:Athalon 64's

[Anonymous Luddite]

>>(Actually, it wouldn't suprise me if only a small portion of the system was actual 64bit (like the kernel). Utilities like notepad are probably still 32bit.)

notepad is 32 bit????

somehow, that takes all the joy out of using it.

Re:Athalon 64's

[tomstdenis]

The 64 should be same/faster even in 32-bit mode. More instructions are DirectPath [including SSE opcodes, and heck you have SSE2 which is unavailable in the XPs] and the decoder window is 16 bytes [instead of 8 bytes].

The latter fact means that you're more likely to get a 3 opcode window with each fetch [8 bytes doesn't go far with MMX/SSE/3DNOW code since they use prefix bytes...].

The only "downside" is that the pipeline is larger. IIRC the ALU pipe is 12 stages long [up from 11] and I think the FPU is a few longer too which adds a slight penalty to mispredicted jumps.

The cure though is to run a real 64-bit OS [say BSD or Linux] and get full use of the CPU. The extra registers [r8-r15 for ALU, xmm8-xmm15 for SSE] makes a huge difference in many applications. The fact they're 64-bits long doesn't help the vast majority of applications but it is a nice touch ;-)

Tom

Re:Athalon 64's

[drumist]

You of course realize it's spelled 'athlon' (e.g., 'decathlon') in that context, too, right? "Athalon" is never right; it just stems from people adding in an extra syllable for who knows why.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Jedi Alec]

Auchentoshan. Great stuff.

Re:Athalon 64's

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, but I couldn't resist the opportunity.

Google just returned over 22,000 hits for "Athalon". Spelling seems to be a lost art, nowadays. 13,000 for "Interger". That one particularly bothers me for some reason.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Breakfast Pants]

64 bit long registers is gonna really help in the not so distant future though when the 4gig memory limit starts seriously coming in to play on desktop machines (it has already come into play on server machines..).

Re:Athalon 64's

[fitten]

an Athlon 64, it is definitely faster than an XP in the same MHz rating

Most of the time (like 95% of the time or more), this is true, but there are some things that rely on raw clock speed since the A64s in 32-bit mode are similar in architecture to the Athlon XPs.

I have three Athlon 64 3000+ (Newcastle) machines, an Athlon XP 2600+/333, and an Athlon XP 2400+/266. None of them are overclocked. Every once in a while, I can find something that my 2.083GHz Athlon XP 2600+/333 does a little faster than my 2.000GHz Athlon 64s can do it. These applications typically are doing heavy x87 code and the 83MHz clock speed difference is enough to show a difference, even if it is very small (usually, the difference is a linear increase based on clock speed = 2083/2000 as fast). Would I exchange my Athlon 64s for Athlon XP 2600+/333s? No way :) because they do most things better.

Re:Athalon 64's

[tomstdenis]

I think in terms of desktop applications that's being vastly overplayed. At the point where KDE or mozilla requires a 64-bit address space we can safely say "ooooh ok".

64-bit long registers help out in areas like bignum math and decently precise fixed point math [e.g. to remove the need for an FPU].

Tom

Re:Athalon 64's

[conan776]

Yo, dude, chill. Just cause other people don't spell as well as us is no reason to go nukular.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Anonymous Coward]

" Now here, I'm a hardcore AMD user" What exactly is a "hardcore AMD user"?

Re:Athalon 64's

[strider44]

Of course, not as if Windows even has a 64-bit OS yet which is what matters for a lot of people (not me tho). Use linux! (not aimed at parent, he hinted that he uses linux. It's aimed at everyone else stupid enough to have an A64 CPU and is not using 64 bit linux!)

Re:Athalon 64's

[obeythefist]

The Athlon 64 chip has a lot of improvements over the old XP core. If you look at the benchmarks in the article, you'll see where the benefits are.

Specifically, the integrated memory controller on the A64/Sempron 3100+ greatly improves throughput and latency.

I'm running an Athlon 64 3000+ at home, and the performance is significantly greater than a 3000+ Athlon XP. I'm counting the days until MS fixes DirectX on WinXP/64 so I can fully use all the capabilities of my CPU.

Re:Athalon 64's

[obeythefist]

the A64s in 32-bit mode are similar in architecture to the Athlon XPs

Not really. If you switch an Athlon64 into 32bit native mode, it still retains the bigger registers, the integrated memory controller, reworked ALU/FPUs... the list goes on. Architecturally, they are very, very different animals.

Re:Athalon 64's

[Breakfast Pants]

Being vastly overplayed? Is this a joke? In 1994 your average new system had 8MB of ram. Today we are nearing the point where the average system has 1gig of ram. This is ten years later, and we are at a 128x increase in the average amount of ram on a new system. Now apparently you think that we'll just progressively get slower and slower and not hit the 4GB requirement any time soon? Games like Doom 3 are already putting 1GB to good use, whereas Doom 2 (also back ~1994) used that 4 to 8MB. You think that everything will just stop advancing and we will all be content with already aren't content with this.

Athlon to change?

[fembots]

Since Sempron is (in)directly competing with AMD's own Athlon, are we going to see changes in Athlon (eg limited to above 3000+ rating only), while Sempron stays in under 3000+?

Re:Athlon to change?

[dougmc]

are we going to see changes in Athlon

Just so there's no confusion ...

Sempron = new name for the 32 bit AthlonXP.
Athlon = `new' name for the 64 bit Athlon64.

Basically, Sempron isn't very different from the AthlonXP that we're used to (and in many cases. they're identical.) And now they'll reserve the Athlon name for the 64 bit versions. Unless I've misunderstood something ...

Re:Athlon to change?

[d3ity]

The semperon is a T-bred core. The Athlons are the barton core. I think that + the FSB speeds will keep the athlon XP's seperate.

Re:Athlon to change?

[mrbcs]

I can still buy Athlon T-bred cores up to 3000+ though they are being phased out.

The sempron (does it fill your hdd with pr0n?) is (according to my wholesaler)the replacement for the durons.

A sempron 2400+ runs at the same clock rate as an Athlon 2000+ (1667) but can be changed to 2000 to be the same as Athlon 2400+ On chip cache is the same (256) and they seem to run almost the same speed. They were even the same price when they came out for me about a month ago.

Re:Athlon to change?

[GarfBond]

Except your simplistic model forgets to include the Sempron 3100+, based off of the Newcastle design. In other words, an a64 derivative :) The review itself includes a Sempron based off of the athlonxp and then one from the athlon64 line.

It's simply Sempron = Budget, Athlon = Performance, Athlon FX = Flagship performance and price. Currently, no semprons have 64-bit, but I expect once 64bit starts taking off they'll have to put it back in.

Re:Athlon to change?

[bersl2]

Sempron = new name for the 32 bit AthlonXP.

The Athlon XPs with the Barton core have 512k L2, while the Semprons have 256k.

Re:Athlon to change?

[obeythefist]

Unfortunately, the Sempron is neither an AthlonXP or an Athlon 64.

The Sempron budget CPU's are derived from both Athlon XP and Athlon64 cores. However, the Sempron 2800+ is different from an Athlon XP2800+ and you would anticpate the performance would be slower due to reduced cache and other features of the Sempron.

Likewise, the "Athlon" name on it's own is an all-encompassing name for CPU's that covers several cores, much like the "Pentium" name covering the PII, PIII and P4 CPUs. The Athlon name currently covers the Athlon Thunderbird, the Athlon XP, the Athlon 64 and the Athlon FX, to name a few.

So, Sempron = Budget, Athlon = Performance. That's all that you can safely infer from the names.

Celeron D voltage discrepency?

[Anonymous Coward]

This Celeron D is only listed at 1.3v in the review and only 1v on Newegg's site. I couldn't locate the correct voltage on Intel's site. Does anybody know the correct answer? Looking to build a low wattage system and this CPU seems perfect

Re:Celeron D voltage discrepency?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be able to get some info here.

Recent AMD price hike

[cortana]

Has anyone noticed how the prices of AMD processors seem to have shot up in the last few months? My brother bought a retail Athlon XP 2800+ for £70 over the summer. Now a Sempron 2800+ is £76 and, and the Althon XP is £96. :(

Re:Recent AMD price hike

[d3ity]

I noticed this as well. luckily I purchaced my 2000+ and 2800+ before this hike. I was shocked to see athalons raise in price just as the 64's started rolling. Seems counterproductive. However, they may have decided to raise prices on thier cheaper products for the people like me who say... "Well, its only 20 bucks more..."

Re:Recent AMD price hike

[ssimontis]

I heard that AMD increased the prices of their faster Athlon64s and their 32-bit Athlons to make their low end Athlon64s cheaper. It happened a few months ago.

Re:Recent AMD price hike

[Anonymous Coward]

There were stories at The Register/The Inquirer a couple weeks ago indicating that AMD would be shifting production to its AMD64/Sempron products and slowing production of the AXP's. Less production with little change in demand => price hikes.

Re:wait...

[oberondarksoul]

Quote: The third chip reviewed is the Celeron D. 1 + 1 + 1 = 3.

care to share?

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:care to share?

[sploo22]

Well, this spoils the joke, but a word-for-word translation from Latin goes something like: "Always where under where." Think about it.

Re:care to share?

[brilinux]

Semper ubi Sub ubi -
Semper is Latin for "always",
Sub is Latin for "under",
and ubi is Latin for "Where".

That should help.

So...

[mlc]

the conclusion is that the most expensive CPU performs the best? Anyone actually surprised by this?

Re:So...

[obeythefist]

Actually if you looked at the benchmarks you would find that the cheaper Semprons outperformed the more expensive Celerons, and in some cases you can see the Semprons outperforming the incredibly expensive Pentium 4 CPU.

This doesn't mean that AMD CPUs are necessarily better than Intels, I'm no rabid fanboy here. But what it does mean is that you must shop around! Look at the performance, compare it to other CPUs of the same price, before you put down your hard earned cash.

"Budget"?

[Lord Kano]

Maybe I'm just too old school for this, but looking at the cost of a new Athlon 64 3000 and motherboard is so low that I wouldn't want to compromise and get the Sempron.

I'd prefer to spend the extra $20 or so and get the better chip.

LK

Re:"Budget"?

[mbourgon]

Are those ECS 755-A2 mobos any good? $200 sounds good, but then I see that Fry's has a special right now: Sempron 2500 + mobo for $59.

Re:"Budget"?

[Anonymous Coward]

YMMV, but I personally will never again touch an ECS motherboard.

Re:"Budget"?

[bhtooefr]

I will second that. My parents are suffering with a ECS board. Also, avoid PC Chips - same company, same crappy boards.

I've heard that the AOpen AK86-L is a good, cheap VIA K8T800-based board, if that's your cup of tea. They also make a nForce3 150-based board, the AK89-L, and a 250-based board, the n250a-FR.

Totally OT, but this is what I want, but the P/N is a Japan Only P/N :-(

Re:"Budget"?

[89cents]

I agree

$189.99 for a Athlon 64 3000 with MB

http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electronics/frys/i/20 04/10/15/6416.html

Re:"Budget"?

[Dark Lord Seth]

Perhaps you do, but I know plenty of people who prefer the cheapest solution possible. peeling away another 20 Euro in base costs would make a small, but notable difference, especially around here where the VAT levels are downright atrocious. ( 19% ) So if I'm able to get 20 euros of with the proc, 20 with the video card, another 20 on memory, another 20 on a cheap drive and another 20 on a HD, all of it using "last release cycle" products, then I still get a very nice PC at about 100 euros cheaper.

Re:"Budget"?

[Lord Kano]

I've had mixed results with ECS. I had a K7S5A for almost three years and it wasn't as stable as it could have been, but it was the best $40 board I could get. I now have an ECS N2U400A, it is sweet. It's fast and stable and I have no complaints at all about it.

LK

Re:"Budget"?

[yem]

I'd prefer to spend the extra $20 or so and get the better chip.

The "better chip" adds extra heat/noise that some people can do without, especially if other components are doing the heavy lifting. My Sempron 3100 / 6800 GT Shuttle box runs Doom 3 at 70+ FPS 1024xHigh with 4x AA.

Re:"Budget"?

[GnuAge]

Those bastards at Arbeit Macht Fry's. There's a MSI logo on the ad in the papers, but when I went to the Concord Fry's today they said it was a print mistake and wouldn't honor it. They wanted to hawk that combo of $260 and pawn off some ECS POS for $190.

Frankly, though, I agree that $200 is no longer budget combo territory. Besides, unless you are a Gentoo user, what the heck do you need that much CPU for anyway? I did some updates for a friend with a PIV 3.08 CPU lappie yesterday and it seemed to take forever, much longer than on my humble boxes with half that much horsepower. Then I realized that I was only using 8-12% of the processor and that the 4200 RPM hard drive was slowing down progress.

Re:"Budget"?

[Lord Kano]

There's a MSI logo on the ad in the papers, but when I went to the Concord Fry's today they said it was a print mistake and wouldn't honor it.

Then you didn't make enough noise. Once you use the words "State Attorney General" and "Better Business Bureau", most places will knuckle under.

Besides, unless you are a Gentoo user, what the heck do you need that much CPU for anyway?

Compiles. Games. Database queries. Emulation.

It doesn't matter what I'm using them for. The point is I'm using them.

LK

Re:"Budget"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also have a K7S5A. And apart from a bug with the NIC I was using when I got it (I just switched over to the onboard one) it has been as stable as anything. And it was the cheapest solution I could get at the time to go with a XP 2100.

Re:"Budget"?

[Raptor CK]

You're absolutely right. If you're running Linux.

I'll happily make my Linux box a 64-bit system. My Sempron 3100+ box, however, is there mainly for gaming under Windows. I save $20, reduce the noise and heat problems, but still get the advantages of the higher IPC and HyperTransport, and I don't pay for functionality which I won't need.

And the best part? If I'm wrong, and games need 64-bit capability in the future, I just grab a then-discounted Socket 754 Athlon64 chip, pop it in, and upgrade to 64-bit Windows.

The Sempron 2800+

[bogaboga]

That is the CPU I am using now. I am pretty satisfied with its performance...but I would like to know from Slashdotters who have AMD CPUs whether they too find their (AMD) performance good. I had an Athlon running at 933MHz, found that it dessipated lots of heat! I once got it to 71 degrees celcius. The Sempron, with its own fan is quieter and more reliable. The highest I have ever got it was 61 degrees celcius. I have not managed to get it hotter. Some people even mentioned that AMD CPUs always operated at higher temperatures, and have at times fried the motherboards! Is this true?

I'd like to push this CPU to its limits to see how I can get it really hot. Any ideas?

Re:The Sempron 2800+

[PhrostyMcByte]

I have one Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton) and one Athlon 1.14GHz (T-bird)

Athlons have always been known to dissipate lots of heat, especially the T-bird series. I have large copper heatsinks on both of them and during this summer temperatures of 60 degrees celcius weren't uncommon. Dont need a heater during the winter though (seriously).

Re:The Sempron 2800+

[DAldredge]

Put in in an oven that has been preheated to 500F

Re:The Sempron 2800+

[badpenguin]

why do you want to get it so hot? Throughout my years of overclocking and such, one would think that there goal is to get it as cool as possible?

Re:The Sempron 2800+

[ameoba]

The first generation of Athlons were very hot running, which resulted in AMDs reputation for heat generation. The XP line of chips, which your Sempron is based on, run at lower voltages produce less heat. The Athlon64 chips are even cooler running.

Depending on what "push this CPU to its limits" means to you you might consider overclocking.

Re:The Sempron 2800+

[tdelaney]

I just put together a Sempron 3100+ (i.e. A64 core) system for a mate. As an indication of it's use, it has a 9600XT - so "mid-level" gaming - Neverwinter Nights, Doom 3 on reasonable quality levels.

I was impressed by the performance. But I was blown away by the temperatures. After pushing it though 3DMark 2001 and Aquamark (12301 and 29381 respectively - highest score on any of our machines) it was running at 43 celsius. Ambient at the time was about 30 celsius. And this was in a system so quiet that I couldn't hear a damn thing, even with my ear right near the box (Antec).

The new core is *much* better than the Athlon XP core.

I would still choose the Celeron D

[dcstimm]

I would still choose the celeron D over the AMD offerings because of all the issues Iv seen with via / sis / nforce1/2 with linux and windows. THeir drivers are really not stable and I have seen really slow hdparm scores with them. I bet if you benched these cpus in linux the celeron would be the most stable because it uses its intel chipset. I think AMD cpus are AWESOME, but the motherboards chipsets people use are junk IMHO.

Re:I would still choose the Celeron D

[chrestomanci]

I would agree with you on the nForce drivers (*), however, my experece with VIA has been good recently. I have an Athlon64 based system with a Via KT800 chipset that runs linux perfectly. All the chipset drivers (Networking, DMA, CpuFreq, HW-monitoring Graphics etc) are driven by open source drivers that are part of the standard 2.6 Linux kernel, without any closed source or non-standard patches.

Having said that, It is running in 32 bit mode, rather than 64.

On the other hand, IMHO, the situation is getting worse with intel chipsets. From what I could tell when I was making a buying decison, there are no open source drivers for their recent integrated graphics, so if you want to use it, you are stuck with either:
1. Stock Redhat, nothing non-standard allowed.
2. Alien (or suchlike) & A weekend trying to get everying working correctly. (And a tainted kernel)
3. Crappy VESA graphics with hardly any acceleration and no 3D.

* Though the situation is getting a lot better, now that reverse engeneered drivers are making it into the 2.6 series Kernels.

Already slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprising that they got slashdotted when we all start sending such looooong URLs. :) OK, here are Google mirrors:

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:3rQXlWPbCtwJ: www.hexus.net/content/news/news_archive_month.php% 3FdXJsX2FyY2hpdmVfbW9udGg9YXJjNi0yMDA0LnR4dA%3D%3D +AMD+Sempron+2800%2B+,+Sempron+3100%2B+and+Intel+C eleron+D+335+site:hexus.net&hl=en

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:onXCbx6BBR4J: www.hexus.net/content/news/news_archive_month.php% 3FdXJsX2FyY2hpdmVfbW9udGg9YXJjNy0yMDA0LnR4dA%3D%3D +AMD+Sempron+2800%2B+,+Sempron+3100%2B+and+Intel+C eleron+D+335+site:hexus.net&hl=en

http://freecache.org/http://www.hexus.net/content/ reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD04Mjc=

http://freecache.org/http://www.hexus.net/content/ reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD04MjcmdXJsX3B hZ2U9MTA=

In other words..

[ciroknight]

The other chip reviewed is the Celeron D.

In other words: HEY SLASHDOT, TWO NEW BUDGET ATHLONS ARE OUT...oh..and that other.. Intel thing..

Seriously though, did anyone else laugh immediately at the bias in this community? I thought it was pretty humorous...

I'll go back to my troll hole now..

Re:In other words..

[donscarletti]

What's your point?

This could be a product of one of two situations:

AMD could actually be superior, and the /. community understands this and sees no point tiptoing around it.

Slashdot has become populated by people who just personally like AMD.

If the first situation is the case then why should slashdot give the Celeron equal attention? If the second is the case then even if Celerons were superior why shouldn't a community be able to talk about things it likes.

Complaints about bias on a community newssite is stupid.

Re:In other words..

[Dun Malg]

Complaints about bias on a community newssite is stupid.

Yeah, people don't get that for some reason. They start shouting "bias! bias!" when nobody claimed to be unbiased. It's a leftover from the olden days when journalists were taught that they should report all pertinent facts and inject no opinion, and believed themselves to therefore be unbiased. Subsequently came the assumption that the media was for that reason supposed to always be unbiased. Bunch of nonsense, if you ask me. Everyone has an axe to grind somewhere, and it's gonna show up in reporting. The "unbiased media " is a fable to pacify idealists, and some people still believe it.

Re:In other words..

[Vegeta99]

Of course, the contributor didn't mention the Intel chip at all, that was thrown in by the editor.

Re:In other words..

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, you just missed the point entirely.

Quote the submitter: "... three 'value' CPUs. The Sempron 2800+ and 3100+ from AMD ..." and NO mention of the third CPU, no matter which one it was.

This is amusing on two fronts. Primarily, the logical connectivity of the original submitter's sentences is completely broken, because it says that "review of three items: item A and item B". Second, it took the poster of the story to correct, but it clearly looked even more like an afterthought because he appended to the submitter's story, in parentheses, instead of interjecting in true editorial fashion.

Now, it could be because the submitter is reflective of a pro-AMD slant. Given that the SUBMITTER REVIEWED THE CHIPS (check out the email address), and rated the Celeron quite well in his conclusions, he was probably just careless.

Now the humor here is that an unintentional mistake on the submitter's part has inadvertently become reflective of a pro-AMD slant here on /..

And the new joke is that a humorous comment by the GP was gotten you all riled up because you wanted to issue your own pro-AMD venom and berate the GP for complaining about it. Note the GP even called himself a troll in his closing, and managed to get some AMD fanboys' panties in bunches by calling them on their bias.

So in short, I've gotten a wonderful laugh about all of this. Thank you!

Re:In other words..

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to move out and join the world. That is the most pathetically sad thing I've read in quite some time.

Re:wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

by Slashdot mathematics: 1 + 1 = 3 ?

Yes but only for large values of 1.

Just keep in mind...

[ameoba]

Just keep in mind that the Celeron D, being based on the P4 "netburst" architecture, has it's performance severly dependant upon memory bandwith. The 533MHz (4x133) bus on the Celeron D is a vast improvement over the 400MHz (4x100) bus on the previous Celeries .

To get decent performance out of any P4-based system, however, it is imperative that you get a motherboard that supports dual-chanel memory, such as one based on Intel's 865 chipset. Going on the cheap and 'saving' $10-15 to get a lower-end chipset is going to seriously hurt the performance of these CPUs.

With the AMDs, it's not so important; the SocketA chips only see about a 5% performance boost from dual-channel and the s754 Sempron, with it's onboard memory controller, can't use it at all

.

price vs power

[St. Arbirix]

Why don't we see many benchmarks that give a CPU a price per point rating?

Watching a Sempron go from 1.75GHz at £50 to 2.0GHz at £75 implies a much greater value on the cheaper one. £25 is a bit of a difference. Especially if I clustered computers and could get three 1.75GHz chips for the price of two 2GHz ones.

SPEC2004 should keep track of prices on chips and display the value of each one, that would keep my attention for chip value.

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel users are surprised.

Athlon XP > Socket A Sempron

[Danj2k]

Nobody seems to have mentioned that the socket A Semprons are in fact not related to the Athlon 64 at all, and they are not a development of current Athlon XP cores either; actually, the socket A Sempron is based off of the Thoroughbred core, which is OLDER than the current Barton core. So personally I would recommend snapping up Barton-core XP chips while you still can, rather than buying these new "budget" Semprons.

3.5GHz Celeron D - damn ...

[Glonoinha]

Honestly I'm not an AMD fanboy (even though I should be, all things considered) ... but I would say that the article glossed over the part I found most interesting : with an entry price of about a hundred bucks the Celeron D will overclock to 3.5GHz with relative ease.

3.5GHz CPU for $100.
Damn.

Re:3.5GHz Celeron D - damn ...

[toddestan]

3.5GHz CPU for $100.
Damn.

Yeah, it may be 3.5Ghz, but it's still just a Celeron.

Re:3.5GHz Celeron D - damn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet the Semprons still outpace the 3.5Ghz Celeron.

*Giggle*

Better chip?

[poptones]

I've never seen a test show the Sempron is the "better chip." I have an AMD now, but if AMD doesn't stop playing all these stupid games with their chips the next one (I'm going to get a mobile for my present mbd) will be the last.

Semprons are only "better" for AMD's bottom line.

Re:Better chip?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's saying spend the extra $20 and get the non-sempron chip. The sempron is the new Duron. It's not as fast, it's cheaper, and if all you're doing it reading web pages and e-mail, it's perfect for a budget PC. I imagine their prices will drop down to become a good 40-50 cheaper then their XP/XP 64 counter parts.

And is Intel putting out the Celeron a stupid game? Because that's what these are the AMD equiv. of.

Re:Better chip?

[Pierre]

The differences for most of those benchmarks were pretty uninspiring 'cept for when the athlon beat everything.

most of the benchmarks were within a percentage point in terms of performance.

though lately i've been dreaming of a quieter machine - the mobile is looking pretty good for that.

Re:Better chip?

[suckmysav]

"though lately i've been dreaming of a quieter machine - the mobile is looking pretty good for that.

Did you know that you can turn a normal "Desktop" Athlon into a Mobile Athlon simply by connecting up some of the L5 bridges?

Once you have done so you can download a utility that lets you change the CPU multiplier on the fly.

How to create Mobile Athlon (desktop to mobile change)

erstwhile?

[OrangeTide]

"That's been the fate of the much-maligned Celeron of late. AMD, on the other hand, has been mixing it its midrange with low-end Athlon 64s whilst also continuing with the erstwhile Athlon XP and a select range of Durons."

"Rather, it seems that its numbering scheme has always tried to approximate the MHz rating from its erstwhile competitor's CPUs."

Looks like the author learned a new word, how exciting for him. Although I think "competitor's erstwhile CPUs" would have made more sense.

erstwhile
adj : belonging to some prior time; "erstwhile friend"; "our
former glory"; "the once capital of the state"; "her
quondam lover" [syn: erstwhile(a), former(a), once(a),
onetime(a), quondam(a), sometime(a)]
adv : at a previous time; "once he loved her"; "her erstwhile
writing" [syn: once, formerly, at one time, erst]

Re:erstwhile?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard?

Netcraft confirms: Intel is dead.

AMD == Gamers

[Anonymous Coward]

It does depend on the games you play. If you're playing Real-Time Strategy games, then your video card isn't used all that much. Hell, a Geforce 4 MX will usually do the trick. But for the First-Person Shooters, like Doom 3 and Far Cry, you need a tremendous video card. You need the processor to be able to power that card, but the cpu-to-gpu scale levels off above a XP 2600+.

I'm a gamer. I buy my video card and monitor, first, then budget my processor with everything else. AMD comes through for me before Intel does.

Specifically, the AMD64 processors (with the SSE2 extensions) are an outstanding buy right now. If only for the SSE2 extensions (the "XP" series only has SSE1 extensions included).

---

If you want to worry about the AGP/PCI-E question, I can sympathize with that. Dual PCI-E cards (using NVIDIA's solution) sounds like it will seriously destroy machine-specs for games.

Wow

[poptones]

I sure understand why you were ashamed to put your name on that post. I usually don't reply to ACs, but what the hell I got karma to burn... and wow. What an incredible morass of misinformation presented in what would otherwise appear to be a thoughtful, well consructed post.

Nice job, AC. Way to mislead! You should be a politician.

that's more....

[zogger]

...my idea of "budget". 59 clams makes more sense as budget, 200 dollars is not "budget". This review looks like "mid range" to me for joe home user... In fact even cheaper would be better. I was hoping for a review of real low end but still new and reasonably decent stuff, to see the best possible deal. To me, leaving out the RAM necessary skews the figures as well, because it's always a crapshoot if your old RAM is reusable. I'd like a decent hundred dollar upgrade, cpu/mobo and at least 256 ram, preferably more. Most likely the used market is the way to go there I guess.

What they missed...

[NerveGas]

Is the Athlon XP-M 2500/2600. Unlocked multipliers, hand-picked cores, and cheap to boot. You're pretty much guaranteed that one will hit 2.3 GHz, and with good air cooling, 2.5 GHz is even possible.

What's better, because of the unlocked multiplier, you can throw fast memory on the board, and overclock the memory/FSB as far as the motherboard will go, *then* turn the clock speed up. I'll bet that one of those would have beaten the entire lot that they tested.

steve

Compatible with 760MPX Dual Boards?

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Are any of these new releases compatible with the old 760MPX Dual Athlon Boards [Tyan S246X-series, Asus A7M266-D]?

It sure would be mighty nice to have a little bit of an upgrade path for those platforms.

Re:Compatible with 760MPX Dual Boards?

[sigaar]

I doubt if the 760MPX can handle 333mhz FSB - I haven't checked if there were updated versions for the chipset though.

DeVry

[bstadil]

Why did you buy an entirely new PC and not just a new motherboard?

Probably DeVry

Re:Don't ruin the good deal! Complain loudly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I myself would never, ever buy a product with such an outrageous defect!!!... unless maybe if Intel makes it cheap and convenient to to so. (hint, hint)

I'm tired of these pussy names for CPUs

[multiplexo]

Celeron, Athlon, Sempron, Opteron, Pentium. I want visceral names! I want manly names. I want names with teeth, names with balls, names with a serious tude. How cool would it be if Intel announced that they were going to call their next processor "The Vindicator" and then AMD could announce one called "The Eviscerator". I'd love to own a computer that had a sticker that read "Intel Bitchslapper 960 Inside".

Re:I'm tired of these pussy names for CPUs

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like...clawhammer?

Re:I'm tired of these pussy names for CPUs

[Peepsalot]

Yeah, except the bitches might take offense to a name like that.

Re:I'm tired of these pussy names for CPUs

[multiplexo]

Dude. I have excellent /. karma, how many bitches am I likely to know?

Only intel?

[Pan T. Hose]

Very good article. It is great that we are not living in Middle Ages any more and someone who uses Debian GNU/Linux can choose an architecture between IA-32, Motorola 68k, Sun SPARC, Alpha, Motorola/IBM PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, IA-64 and S/390, and in fact much more when using a BSD kernel instead of Linux, so I would expect from such a comprehensible review that it would include more than only one architecture, basically comparing apples to apples. Are they planning to add more architectures to their comparison? I really hope so because other than that it is a great review. By the way, do you know what CPU architecture I am really looking forward to? MMIX. I hope one day I will able to buy one.

No. They do it to save money. Period.

[Ayanami Rei]

Because HP/Compaq, Gateway and Dell motherboards AND cases are ALL MADE IN TAIWAN. Laptops too.

But almost none of the desktop systems have any custom-made parts besides the power supply/case/motherboard. Everything else is standard, or OEM'd with Dell/whatever stickers on them.

Re:No. They do it to save money. Period.

[suckmysav]

" Because HP/Compaq, Gateway and Dell motherboards AND cases are ALL MADE IN TAIWAN.

Yes, but these parts are all custom made for each of the individual companies you have mentioned. And guess what, it costs money to custom design a board and set up a custom manufacturing run to assemble it

There is no cost/price related reason that you would want to make a motherboard that has its mount holes in non standard places. Even if you wanted to screw down your costs by buying job-lots of Tiawanese motherboards that are made to the lowest possible quality/price point using the cheapest possible componments there is no cost saving to be had by specifying an oddly shaped motherboard. The smaller=cheaper argument doesn't apply because I don't think Dell/HP/Gateway et all make anything smaller than a miniATX, so if they are interested in smallness, they could just use one of those. Most of the proprietary motherboards I have seen have been considerably larger than their "standard " counterparts in fact.

It would be much cheaper for Dell to buy standard ATX motherboards and not have to wear the extra costs involved in the custom design and manufacturing of parts, so clearly it is not the costs that they are mostly concerned with. They can (and do) drive the costs down by specifying the cheapest possible componentry, but they are equally interestet in being seen as different to all the others out there. Anybody can buy stock parts from Tiawan and build their own range of PC's, but then they are no different than any of the other guys who do the exact same thing. Dell, Compaq, et all do not want to be "just another white-box assembler". I can absolutely understand why they feel this way. If a Dell was exactly the same as the Mom and Pop Tiawanese beige box you can buy down on the high street, then why exactly would you buy a Dell?

The way it is now is that Dell can say "Yes, we are diffeerent than the rest", and trust that nobody notices that although they are different, they are not necessarily different in ways that are particularly good to be so. And it seems that they are right, because they sell shitloads of PC's every single day.

Re:No. They do it to save money. Period.

[bob beta]

If a Dell was exactly the same as the Mom and Pop Tiawanese beige box you can buy down on the high street, then why exactly would you buy a Dell?

The thing is, the Dell is superior to the Mom & Pop Whitebox system. Because the Mom & Pop systems by default are made with the shit components, i.e. 'Ali chipset', totally shit 'clone' ethernet card, etc. Likely bottom-barrel no-name memory, and the cheapest power supply they could source.

You have to do a LOT more than buy the default whitebox system to get something better than a stock Dell out of a 'corner' PC store.

Re:No. They do it to save money. Period.

[suckmysav]

Dell et' al do this, and more. You don't think they sell all those PC's with integrated video and shared video RAM because it's a better solution do you? Not to mention the 120W PSU you will most likely get because that is the bare minimum rating required to power the system in it's default form.

Another thing you should do if you have the opportunity to look inside lots of name brand PCs is to take note of all the "wire mods" they have on their PCBs. You won't see many stock Asus motherboards out there with cut tracks and bits of hookup wire to reroute signals (to fix hardware bugs in the original design), but you see plenty of such hacks on your fancy Compaq or HP pc's, I assure you.

Re:No. They do it to save money. Period.

[bob beta]

My Dell boxes have embedded ATI video, and embedded 3Com ethernet. The 'integrated' clone boards are absolute junk by comparison.

Think GIMP with 16-bit color!

[Ayanami Rei]

Smokin fast... ^_^

Less the chipset, more the motherboard.

[Ayanami Rei]

If you buy an MSI or ASUS (or Tyan but that's pricey) AMD mobo you're pretty much guaranteed good and stable performance. You'll never see a SiS chipset, and you'll only find the most stable implementations of Via, AMD or more recently, Nvidia chipsets therein.

I think the submitter just forgot, that's all :)

[timothy]

I added the note because it seems the submitter just typed faster than he should have, and left out the third of the (three) chips he promised earlier in the submission. Since that didn't scan right ("the three primary colors, blue and red."), I added the note, which was meant to be unobtrusive :)

My four most-frequently-used computers have, respectively, a VIA (mini-ITX generic shoebox), an AMD (Shuttle shoebox), an Intel (Toshiba laptop) and a Motorola (iBook) chip; I may have favorite machines for different things, but I don't think I know enough to be a processor (or processor manufacturer) bigot :)

Cheers,

timothy

Celeron, the next generation

[Anonymous Coward]

The third chip reviewed is the Celeron D.

Celeron D, huh? I just had a strange vision of a bald French guy at an Intel fab barking out: "Make it slow, Number 0.999997284!"

Re:Athlon XP Socket A Sempron

[smoker2]

I recently built a system for the kids to use. It was going to be mainly used for web browsing, email, dvd playback and word processing (homework).
I get most of my components from ebuyer and I originally wanted a fairly inexpensive Athlon XP2500+ cpu. However, as I gradually put the separate items into the cart, the damn XP2500 went out of stock, and the higher rated chips cost more than I wanted to spend.
So reluctantly, I added a 2500 sempron instead, while worrying about the reduced onboard cache (256 instead of 512k )
I built the system, and installed SUSE 9.1 via an FTP install.

Well, the damn thing was slow as f**k. The browser kept hanging (firefox) and the screen refresh was slow and the whole system felt bad. Admittedly, I am using the onboard graphics on the MSI micro atx mboard, but even so, it was sharing 64MB ram of the 512 available.
Seriously not impressed !

Anyway, as a last resort, I tried installing FC2 instead of SUSE yesterday. What a difference !

The systems feels right now, no problems with the browser and the systems responds as it should for its capabilities. I guess what I'm saying is, that unless you want a dedicated fps gaming machine then the semprons are fine. And I didn't even use the fastest available chip. I am still adding an AGP 8x graphics card though, coz the dvd playback will be so much better.

Full system specs (with ebuyer quick find codes):
MSI KM4M-V SKT A 8xAGP Onboard VGA/Sound/LAN ATA133 MATX CPU support Up to XP 3200+ (FSB333) Retail Box - £29.30 - 65354
AMD Sempron 2500 (sda2500box) Processor 256Cache 333FSB Retail box with 3 year warranty - £44.24 - 65076
Crucial 512 DDR333 PC2700 DIMM - £47.51 - 42149
Seagate Barracuda 40GB 7200rpm UDMA100 UIDE - OEM - £29.74 - 32050
Casetek CK-1007-2B Black And Silver Mini Atx Case With 250WATT PSU - £14.99 - 66024
Nec 8x DVD Dual R/RW IDE BLACK Burner - OEM - £36.95 - 58481
Mitsumi OEM Black Internal Floppy Drive 1.44mb 3.5 Inch - £3.59 - 62047
Logitech Black with Silver PS2/USB Optical Desktop Keyboard And Mouse - OEM - £19.70 - 52117
Fedora Core 2 - £free !
Sub-total £226.02
vat (17.5) £ 39.55
carriage £ 10.00
Total £275.57
Adding this later:
Gainward Fx Powerpack! Pro/660 AGPx 8 TV-DVI Fx5200 128MB Retail Box - £32.95 + vat - 59427
So not bad for just over £314 !

Cows cows cows eating all my ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Hexus is broken in Safari.

Sempron 3100 is a good deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing some simple calculations on the data shows that the Sempron 3100+ and the P4 2.8E have equivalent performance, yet the Sempron 3100+ is $50 less then the P4 2.8E. Also, because the Sempron 3100+ uses the socket 754 spec you can swap it with a Athlon 64 when they come down in price.

The Numbers:
Chip: Composite Score: Avg. Price:
Athlon 64 3400 14376.89 $277.05
P4 2.8E 12232.21 $175.61
Sempron 3100 12077.85 $124.00
Cel. D 335 10411.69 $107.50
Sempron 2800 9882.14 $107.25

Counting the CPUs reviewed

[EmagGeek]

Let's see here... one..... two............ FIVE!!

Re:Counting the CPUs reviewed

[Scrab]

Three sir!

Re:wait...

[ESqVIP]

Maybe they were actually 1.0 + 1.0 on a Pentium.

(okay, nonsense IEEE fun)

MMIX

[Pan T. Hose]

For those who don't know what I mean, MMIX is a 64-bit RISC CPU designed by Donald Knuth:

MMIX is a machine that operates primarily on 64-bit words. It has 256 general-purpose 64-bit registers that each can hold either fixed-point or floating-point numbers. Most instructions have the 4-byte form 'OP X Y Z', where each of OP, X, Y, and Z is a single 8-bit byte. For example, if OP is the code for ADD the meaning is "X=Y+Z"; i.e., "Set register X to the contents of register Y plus the contents of register Z." The 256 possible OP codes fall into a dozen or so easily remembered categories. The designers of important real-world processor chips (e.g., MIPS and ALPHA) have helped me with the design of MMIX. So I'm excited about the prospects.

So am I, Mr. Knuth. So am I.

("Donald Ervin Knuth is a renowned computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Knuth is best known as the author of the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming, one of the most highly respected references in the computer science field. He practically created the field of rigorous analysis of algorithms, and made many seminal contributions to several branches of theoretical computer science. He is the creator of the TeX typesetting system and of the Metafont font design system, and pioneered the concept of literate programming."--Wikipædia.)