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Hi. i'm researching the facts before i buy new components, and just wondering what are the real differences between, say an Athlon 64 3400 and the Sempron 64 3400. the sempron is loads cheaper, so what does the athlon offer that makes the money worth it? thanks for your help!
The 1st thing you need to know is that Sempron64 & Athlon64 model numbers are NOT comparable. The S64 is comparable to a Celeron, the A64 is comparable to a P4.
The S64 is basically an A64 with less L2 cache. It has S64 has either 128k or 256k L2...the 256k version is the one to go with. The A64 has either 512k or 1MB L2.
Of the 2 you're considering, the S64 3400+ runs at 2.0GHz w/256k L2, the A64 3400+ runs at 2.4GHz & has 512k L2 cache...the A64 is the better choice.
If you're gonna go with a S64, you'd be better off getting a S64 2800+ Palermo ($75). If you want an A64, go with a 3000+ Venice ($120).
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http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron-3000.html
With a sub $50.00 difference, getting the A64 makes more sense, and most importantly because of its viable upgrade path.
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With the right PSU, RAM and motherboard, you can easily coax 2.2Ghz+ speeds out of the 939 A64 3000+.
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i'll be using a 754 board, 1600fsb, with 512mb of pc3200. there weren't any 939 boards with the features and price i'm looking for.
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If you were posting this nine months ago, I would have agreed with your 754 upgrade, however at the present time it is just a bad move.
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There are many different cores for the Athlon 64...the Venice & San Diego cores are the latest for the single core S939 A64. The 3000+ Venice is the only S754 A64 based on one of the new cores.
"The new Venice core, or E3 revision, is a bit different compared to the previous 90nm Winchester release, and offers not only a higher clock speed ceiling, but also an updated feature set and higher performance. The integrated memory controller has been given an overhaul, and it now includes support for mismatched DDR DIMMs and the population of all four sockets at DDR400 speeds. This last factor is important, because in previous core revisions, the Athlon 64 and 64 FX processors would drop down to DDR333 memory speeds with all four DIMM sockets populated with double-sided DIMMs, Overall memory performance has been also enhanced through improved memory mapping and lower memory latencies.
The 90nm Venice core also has support for SSE3, an addition that brings it on par with the Pentium 4 Prescott models, and not that far behind the Intel cutting edge. AMD has planned their support of these Streaming SIMD Extensions, and as each new revision starts to gain speed in the developer community, AMD quickly adds support. SSE3 will provide some extra power for multimedia and media encoding duties..."
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3507586
Also, I recommend a motherboard based on the nForce3 250 chipset...or better yet, the nForce3 250Gb.
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The Athlon version has twice or more the L2 cache, as someone else has posted. That means the CPU can prefetch twice as much data before processing it. However, given the 64-bit bus width it makes less difference as the previous 32-bit versions with the same amount of difference in cache.
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hehe... yeah well TD always seems to have good deals and selection... plus proven reliability (at least in my experience). but hey, i'm just looking for a good deal on parts. i'm not married to tigerdirect, so if anyone has any other suggestions for reliable and established sites to shop on, i'd be happy to try them!
as for my reason for upgrading in the fist place... here's what i'm using: celeron 1.7ghz, on a 478 mobo (4xagp, 400fsb), 384ddr, geforce fx5200(128mbddr, 8x). i'm upgrading because i want to take full advantage of my video card for games and for more speed when reprocessing dvd video and encoding mp3 audio. i figured an A64 board with a 3400 cpu and 1600mhz fsb would give me the extra boost i need.
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