AMD Sempron

Obviously the Sempron is aimed at the low-mid range market so we are not expecting any records to be broken here, what we are looking at in this sector is a price to performance ratio. Do you get enough performance out of the chip for your pound, more bang for your buck as they say. The Sempron will directly replace the Athlon XP and as soon as it hits the market AMD will phase out the current Athlon XP range of CPU's. The Athlon 64 will become the flagship microprocessor and the Sempron will serve the value market.

Sempron Socket A Model Numbers

The socket A models of the Sempron are relatively straight forward with a clock frequency increase with every model number increase until you get the 3000+ which has the same frequency as the 2800+ here on this one occasion we see that the Level 2 cache has been doubled to provide an extra performance boost and therefore requiring the increase in model number.

The Sempron doesn't reach blistering clock speeds with the top socket A model topping at 2Ghz. However this will increase yields for AMD and so keep the price reasonable. Also bear in mind that the Sempron is based on the T-Bred core and not the Barton core so this again is another reason why the speeds look lower. The Barton core was too big to be a budget chip because of its lower yields and higher heat dissipation.

Sempron for the Socket 754

To satisfy the value market for the socket 754 which is the basis for the Athlon 64, we also have a Sempron based on the Paris core, this is essentially a Athlon 64 with no capabilities for 64-bit processing. At release it will be available in the 3100+ and looks to be the best value chip of the bunch. The Sempron 3100+ is actually quicker clock for clock than the socket A version so the 3100+ ticks along at only 1.8Ghz without sacrificing the performance.

A different tactic was chosen with the socket 754 Sempron CPU's. AMD released both 128K and 256K level 2 cache versions of all but the 1.4Ghz chips (probably because this would effectively cripple the slower chip). This would obviously be reflected in the price of these chips and again the cache difference shows the reason behind the different model numbers.

The release of the AM2 socket did not stop the production of the Sempron CPU. A new fresh line up of Semprons were released in even higher clock speeds. The AM2 socket was designed to bring the whole AMD processor family together under the one platform allowing for easy upgrading and better product compatibility.