CDsDontBurn

today at work, i was looking through the AMD processors, and got my first look at the AMD Semprons. All they are is an Athlon XP pretty mcuh. The packaging said "Socket A" Now what's up w/that? I thought it was supposed to be a toned down version of the A64. I thought the sempron was supposed to be the equivalent of the Athlon XP's Duron. Does anybody have any insight on this matter?

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AIW Guru

Feel free to read any review of the sempron launch. There's about 24 of them.

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Matth

Why call ONE processor series Sempron, when you can REALLY confuse people by using the same name for a SktA and a non-64bit 64 bit CPU.

Nice one, AMD !

dj_stick

the socket A chips are re-badged t-bred/barton cores afaik
where as the socket 754(or is it 939?) chips are a crippled 64bit chip

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Geminiwave

yeah except the funny part about it is that the A64s probably wont be slower by much. The 64bit extensions arent really used and the cache doesnt make much of a difference in processor power for the A64(i say not MUCH. alittle bit)

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AIW Guru

How is that different from the Celeron series? It's spanned sockets from slot-1 to LGA775 and from the P6 architecture to netburst.

It's a name used to differentiate their value parts and their PR rating is targeted to celerons rather than P4s. It's really pretty simple.

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Fatality_

IMO amd's naming is really very simple ..

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AMD64 3200+, 1024MB RAM, X800 XT PE

Geminiwave

AMD basically compares itself to the competition. so its pretty easy to see where things stand...until the competition changes its rating system (damn those intel bastards and they're new LGA775 rating system)

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AIW Guru

Also, the Socket A Semprons are NOT exactly copies of their Athlon XP counterparts.
For example, the Athlon XP 2400+ run at 2Ghz on a 266FSB with 256K cache.
The Sempron 2800+ runs at 2Ghz on a 333FSB with 256K cache.
Similarly, all speeds have a 333fsb whereas their AXP counterparts have a slower FSB. The only exception to this are higher clocked T-bred B's and bartons neither of which have been duplicated in the Sempron line so I don't see a problem.

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CDsDontBurn

Intels LGA775 line is a terrible line-up. C'mon....pins on the MoBo??? It's terrible!

And i'm still confused over the sempron/AXP thing. the sempron is a socket A chip w/a different name now. is AMD calling them semprons cuz the socket As have a different core now, or cuz they just wanna be dumb and rename their whole socket A line-up?

man....ever since AMD locked the multipliers, i swear they've been turning into GAYMD......hehehe. my avatar says different tho .

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Geminiwave

Sempron isnt just socket A. in fact soon enough it will be MOSTLY A64s in the sempron lineup.

and I agree...pins on the mobo is evil. its just intel trying to save money which is in turn screwing the Mobo companies.

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Vampyromaniac

They wanna be dumb

This is what the Socket-A Semprons are: 333MHz FSB AthlonXP's, with 256k cache (like the old AthlonXP 2700+, remember?) AMD is basically turning socket-A into the low-end value line, with the Sempron name.

But that's not all! There's also Semprons for Socket-754. Yes, they're also just called Sempron, but these are K8 cores (Newcastle I think) with 256k cache, and without x86-64. There's only one model of those so far, the 3100+. I guess that's supposed to be their mid-range or upper "budget" line. A decent value I suppose. Maybe they should have just called them Athlon32

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CDsDontBurn

AMD should have just kept to the Athlon XPs w/socket A, and called the low end (256k L2 cache) Athlon 64s Semprons.

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Vampyromaniac

I think they want people to start spending money on Athlon64's, so they axe the AthlonXP name, replace it with Sempron, then the decent-income John Q. Public's see the choice: Athlon64 or Sempron, and go for the mainstream. Whereas if there were still AthlonXP, they'd see that as the mainstream (and A64 as premium).

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AIW Guru

That's exactly it. It's about seperating their premium name from value prices.
It's the same as Intel not wanting to sell a Pentium for $50. That price point is for Celerons only.

P.S. Check your PMs vamp

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CDsDontBurn

the day that Athlon XPs are disconinued, i'm going to miss them. I had 3 different XPs, and 5 different socket A chips. They were all good to me ('cept the one i broke )

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