A Classic Choice
I really enjoyed reading Anandtech's recommendations for a Fall system this week. As most of us do live in the real world where a budget does matter, I was intrigued to see what processor they chose for the budget category. I was not at all surprised at the choice on the Intel side for a Pentium D 805. It's an obvious choice for a downright cheap dualie processor chip. On the other hand, the AMD selection was more intriguing.
AMD has spent quite a bit of development, and more on marketing to develop the Sempron line of chips. They are designed for budget boxes as a cost affordable solution, and an alternative to the competing Celeron chips. I noticed immediately that the AMD budget system used an Athlon 64 3000+ chip. Sure, the chip is updated to fit into the AM2 socket, but in the end it is the venerable Athlon 64 that has been popular for years. Forget that the clock speed is a mere 1.8 GHz, or that it was released in early 2004. The good ol' Athlon has one thing going for it- cache. The Athlon 64 has 512 KB of cache to the Sempron's 128 KB (the top Sempron, a 3600+ has 256 KB of cache). This is the one thing that makes the Athlon 64 attractive compared to its other value stablemates. Enthusiasts know that a cache starved chip is not going to be an good performer, and simply don't want it.
Well, there you have it. AMD can stop wasting their time and money making cache starved Sempron chips. The Athlon 64 is a classic, and although outgunned in the current world of dual core (and on the verge of quad core) chips, it can still hold its own. See, it's hard to improve upon a classic.
--Jonas
If you want to see even the fastest Sempron trail across a variety of benchmarks, head on over here.
AMD has spent quite a bit of development, and more on marketing to develop the Sempron line of chips. They are designed for budget boxes as a cost affordable solution, and an alternative to the competing Celeron chips. I noticed immediately that the AMD budget system used an Athlon 64 3000+ chip. Sure, the chip is updated to fit into the AM2 socket, but in the end it is the venerable Athlon 64 that has been popular for years. Forget that the clock speed is a mere 1.8 GHz, or that it was released in early 2004. The good ol' Athlon has one thing going for it- cache. The Athlon 64 has 512 KB of cache to the Sempron's 128 KB (the top Sempron, a 3600+ has 256 KB of cache). This is the one thing that makes the Athlon 64 attractive compared to its other value stablemates. Enthusiasts know that a cache starved chip is not going to be an good performer, and simply don't want it.
Well, there you have it. AMD can stop wasting their time and money making cache starved Sempron chips. The Athlon 64 is a classic, and although outgunned in the current world of dual core (and on the verge of quad core) chips, it can still hold its own. See, it's hard to improve upon a classic.
--Jonas
If you want to see even the fastest Sempron trail across a variety of benchmarks, head on over here.
posted by digitaldoc at 9:50 PM
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