Athlon vs Sempron

[PigCake]

whats the difference. ive heard that they are the same, but if they are, then why the different names?

[PrntRhd]

Unofficial sources said that AMD Sempron processors for the Socket 754 infrastructure are likely to feature AMD Athlon 64 core, but with disabled 64-bit capability.
Sort of like Celerons are to Pentium 4s.

[PigCake]

so which is better, Sempron or Athlon?

[PrntRhd]

Sempron should be lower cost, AthlonXP will be the higher end chip.

[saphalline]

The SocketA Semprons basically use a Barton core with only half the L2 cache (256KB vs 512KB). They will exclusively use the 333MHz FSB (to improve compatibility), and their rating system is different. They aren't rated based on overall K7 performance, they are rated according to business app performance (like MS Office) and other integer-related code. So a Sempron 2800+ will perform worse than an AthlonXP 2800+ when it comes to gaming. But the Sempron is significantly cheaper because, I suspect, the architecture was designed without the other half of the L2 cache (instead of just disabling it which wouldn't cut costs as much).

As value CPU's go, the SocketA Sempron beats down the Celeron D without too much of a problem and is just as cheap, so it's a pretty good deal. It makes a good Duron replacement (especially since the fastest Duron was the "Applebred" 1800MHz with only 64KB of L2 cache).

Moving on to the real meat of the matter is the Socket754 Sempron. This is an interesting one because it uses AMD's K8 core, but the 64-bit support is disabled. It still gets a tremendous boost from the onboard memory controller, but again, the rating is based on business and integer performance only. It once again has less L2 cache (256KB), but the Socket754 3100+ is actually slower than the SocketA 2800+ (1.8GHz vs 2GHz) which just shows how much more powerful the basic K8 core is. The Socket754 Sempron will likely stay at only 256KB of L2 cache for quite some time, but future versions will have 64-bit support back online. For now, the Sempron is good for getting a cheap Socket754 system up and running with the option for 64-bit support on the next upgrade. And of course, it still smokes the Celeron D.

The focus of AMD's Sempron is to provide a cheap alternative to the more powerful CPU's, so low manufacturing costs were absolutely the main goal. And cutting a few corners doesn't hurt much when modern CPU's are way more than powerful enough for most computing tasks. The only task that the Sempron is not suited for is high-end gaming. Since most people don't play the latest PC games, and since Intel isn't pushing the Celeron D enough, expect the Sempron to take over almost the entire low-end market.