Hello Sempron; AMD's ''Always-Ron'' CPU

by Kristopher Kubicki on 6/18/2004 10:00 AM EST
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  • klander - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link

    Ive got an Athlon XP 1700+ on my
    ASUS a7n266-VM motherboard that
    is upgradeable upto athlon 2600+.
    Will i be able to put a sempron 2600 on
    my motherboard instead of an athlon 2600?
  • klander - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link

  • Pumpkinierre - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link

    Its good to see the Duron receiving the acclaim that it deserves. Its also good to see a cheap a64 even if it is missing its 64bits.
  • KristopherKubicki - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link

    My apologies, i didnt say it like a bad thing. I was refering to AMD sales info that put the 1.6 and 1.8ghz durons far ahead of the XP in sales. The A64s didnt even seem to register on AMD's sales data. This is actually extremely common - the 1.8 durons are awesomefor the price.

    I changed it anyway.

    Kristopher
  • zeoncl - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link

    "South American markets are just beginning to adopt Athlon XP"

    ?!

    At least here in Chile, we are beginning to adopt the A64 by now... each day you see less palominos, and TB n' Barton Cores are everywhere... plz inform yourself and don't generalize when posting something like this. We are NOT aborigens walking naked n' hunting for living... PLZ

    Greetings
  • AtaStrumf - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link

    512 kB 2,0 GHz is 3000+
    1 MB 2,0 GHz is 3200+

    so a 2,0 GHz/256 kB would have to be 2900+
    and a 2,2 GHz/256 kB would probably amount to 3100+.

    If that is correct, a $124 is indeed not all that bad, so asuming noramal availability, maybe there will finaly be a higher adoption rate of socket 754 platform and I can finaly upgrade my 1,5 year old 2,2 GHz Athlon XP, although I may not get much of a performance improvement.
  • Marsumane - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    I think the barton socket a's are better priced now then these will be then. (assuming 2500+ = 2500+)
  • TrogdorJW - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    I'm a little curious as to what the socket 754 Sempron 3100+ will entail. With the Athlon 64 3000+ running at 2.0 GHz with 512K of cache, the Sempron 3100+ would obviously have to be clocked higher to warrant a higher rating. 2.2 GHz is likely, but with the lack of L2 cache, I think 2.4 GHz would be a more reasonable target to get the "3100+" rating.

    At a target price of only $124, that's somewhat promising. Of course, the release is still two months away, and hopefully by that time the prices of Athlon 64 will have come down a bit more. I'm not holding my breath, though.
  • KF - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    >AMD said that their PR rating was compared to a thunderbird,
    > will these be the same?
    "AMD claims the Sempron will coincide with Celeron naming..."

    To me that means Sempron model numbers (PR?) will be the equivalent performing Celeron speed. As Anandtech showed in their Duron vs P4 Celeron shootout, that is a huge ratio, even while recognizing the Athlon to P4 ratio. P4s need everything enabled or performance drops into the abyss.

    The problem with the head to head rating, as opposed to a benchmark based rating, is going to be that Intel will, no doubt, give Celeron more of the P4 attributes as P4 nears its end-of-life and is replaced, just as they did with the P3. So AMD will have to see what Intel does before assigning model numbers.
  • Cygni - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    I love it that whenever something VALUE targeted is released, people jump all over the place saying "OMG What a let down"... dude, we have known for MONTHS that Paris was going to be a toned down value proc on 754/939... and what exactly did you guys expect for the Socket A final refresh? Of course it was going to be old Barton/Thronton/Tbred B cores that are sitting around. AMD isnt going to tool up a whole new proc to handle a dieing platform. Geeze!

    Personally, a majority of the comps i build for people are low end anyway, so this interests me a ton. The 754 32bit Sempron could be pretty darn attractive, and I bet it will be quite the overclocker as well, as its just a Hammer core with some features disabled.
  • Runamile - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    #1-Sempron, on a portuguese pronouciation, sounds like "Sem-pron", or "Without-pron".

    Why would you EVER buy a chip that dosn't support pr0n?
  • Pino - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    "South American markets are just beginning to adopt Athlon XP"

    Give me a break, Kristopher!!!

    I´m Brazilian, and I am using my second Athlon XP (Tbred B 2200+) for about a year, I had an XP 1700+ Palomino and a Thunderbird 1.0Ghz before.

    And I can already order my Athlon 64 3200+ if I want. (or If i had the money :-)
  • zyzzix - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link

    While this is all nice to know, what would be really interesting to know is how the low wattage mobile Athlon 64's perform.
  • Wonga - Thursday, June 17, 2004 - link

    Cheers for the reply, Kristopher.

    I was hoping the Sempron would go past 2.2GHz on Socket A, but like nserra says, I guess they don't need that much raw speed to beat the Celeron.
  • KristopherKubicki - Thursday, June 17, 2004 - link

    Duron clocks around 1.8ghz so i was expecting 1.8 - 2.2 for now. I believe the clocks will probably line up pretty closely to Barton 2500+, 2600+, 2800+, etc.

    Kristopher
  • nserra - Thursday, June 17, 2004 - link

    "judging by the naming of the new processors the clock speed appears moderately low "

    You are comparing the rating agains the AMD XP and AMD64, you should compare against Duron so expect 1.6Ghz and up.
    This line is agains Celeron. They don't need to much Ghz to beat them....
  • Wonga - Thursday, June 17, 2004 - link

    I'd rather know the clock frequencies of these processors, rather than their ratings. Do you know what they might be Kristopher?
  • jensend - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    High wattage, no NX, probably still based on Athlon XP rather than A64. All three of the rumors which had me interested in "Paris" squelched :(
  • Marsumane - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    So this is basically telling us what crap processor is comming out that im assuming an oced barton core will crush. Doesnt interest me too much.
  • TrogdorJW - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    Basically, Sempron is just a tweaked Thoroughbred. With that power dissipation, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2800+ Sempron runs at close to 2.2 GHz. The old Thoroughbred-B 2.17 GHz was the 2700+ - or was that an early 2800+? - so that seems about right.

    Hopefully AMD is just being better about their PR naming these days. No way could you call anything on Socket A running at less than 2.8 GHz a "3200+" - that's about what it would take to bring performance close to that of the A64 3200+.
  • HighCalibreHooch - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    How likely is it that the Sempron will go past 2800+ for Socket A?

    By the way, Netopia, I'm a fan of ST:TNG and I didn't get your reference. What do you mean?
  • Netopia - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    "Always RON"...

    I have to ask... was that in anyway an homage to the creator of DATA and LORE on ST-NG?

    Sorry... HAD to ask.

    Joe
  • Stuke - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    actually a Duron has 128KB of L1 cache and 64KB of L2 cache. So the Sempron has 4x times cache of the Duron.
  • nserra - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    AMD said that their PR rating was compared to a thunderbird, will these be the same?
    Or this PR rating will be in a direct compare to duron?

    Will be based at Thoroughbreds I bet, barton is a crap! More cache, but less speed (mhz), higher manufacturing cost, more heat, more power requirement.
    Amd should have improved the Thoroughbreds core instead of making the barton.
  • Dantzig - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    Any product name with "pron" in it makes me giggle.
  • notoriousformula - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    i was at the AMD Spring Tech Tour today in Vancouver BC, AMD Marketting Spokemen Mark confirmed that Semprons are here to Replace Durons not Athlon XP's...These are only targetted towards Basic Internet/e-mail/Home users and willbe priced very cheap.
  • Pumpkinierre - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    "Always-RON" maybe we will see it in a Big Mac soon Ha Ha! Sorry could'nt help it!
  • Lotec13 - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    No Execute is the Enhanced Virus Protection also know as NX MMX SSE and 3dnow will still be there dont worry
  • BUBKA - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    "Sempron won't support No eXecute instructions."

    is that MMX, SSE, 3DNow?
  • kuk - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link

    Sempron, on a portuguese pronouciation, sounds like "Sem-pron", or "Without-pron". Although this has no meaning (and probably won't effect sales), a name that starts with 'without' is not very ... err ... common. Regarding the technical details, it looks like the SocketA Sempron would be similar to the Thoroughbred, so one should expect higher working frequencies than a similar rated Barton. We'll wait and see.

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