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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.)
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.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
..to their more comfortable print version.
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 ...
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).
Well, this spoils the joke, but a word-for-word translation from Latin goes something like: "Always where under where." Think about it.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
It's cheaper to have your fabs only have to worry about one core.
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.
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
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.