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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.)
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?
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.
Get your Unix fortune now!
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. :(
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.
keanmarine.com
I have a cheap cluster at home.
Now the question is WTF do I do with it? (Details in sig)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
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.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
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 !