Sempron 2600 KILLS Athlon 64 3400

Blinkme323

Hi guys, I was planning on buying a new cpu/mobo combo for under 150. I could get a Mobile Athlon, A64 2800, or Sempron 2600. I ended up going with the Sempron because the A64 came with a cheap motherboard and the socket a is dead. I got an MSI NEO and Sempron 2600 s754 for $145 and I am glad I did. It performs amazingly. I upped the bus from 200-300 and the temps are great. The voltage is 1.5 and it has the stock heatsink. It runs everyhting better than a friend's 3400. Does anybody know how it does this with only 128k cache. If you don't believe me, check out this link. We have found the new Athlon 1700 and Athlon Mobile 2500. This far exceeds those.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...on-2600_9.html

Meaker

Hmz I wonder why.... Well increasing the memory bandwidth 50% helps, along with increasing the clocks 50%, yeah that helps too. What did you think was going to happen when you compare a stock cpu to one heavily overclocked?

If you want a technical explanation:

The athlon 64 uses an onboard memory controler, this means with direct access to the memory the latencies involved when talking to the memory are much less. When the cache is reduced the CPU has to talk to the memory more, but with the A64 this is less of problem as the memory becomes like a slow cache. The P4 is clocked higher and has to go through the NB to talk to the memory leading to much higher latencies as far as the CPU is concerned so the P4 takes a MUCH larger hit from cache reduction as seen in the celeron series, also the FSB is lower on those so it is a double whammy.

No_Style

Above all else, A64 is well.. 64-bit. Socket 939 is the future of A64 as well.

However, if you were looking for a decent rig built with very little expenses, then I guess that's a good move.

The_Neon_Cowboy

Especially since 64 bit XP is here in less then a month!!!!!
The semprons are over priced... less cache

Blinkme323

A chaintec nforce3 250 mobo that hits 315 bus and a sempron 2600 that can do 2.6ghz on stock cooling for $145 shipped is a bad price. I got mine off of ZZF. With 315x8 and stock cooling it is 31c idle 49c load.

Matth

If you made a successful 50% overclock, then you have the CPU running at 2.4GHz, against 2.2 for an A64 3400+

Cache? - presumably they still have the 64k L1 & L2, and the exclusive cache architecture, so it really is 256k total and not caching things twice.

If you can mostly cache hit, all you need is a cache big enough to achieve that... Intel threw double the cache (2Mb from 1Mb) at the P4-600 series, and only a few things really benefit from it!

The_Neon_Cowboy

AMD uses a 64K L1 code cache + a L1 64K exclusive, then what ever L2 cache

Actually on the P4 hyper treading really needed that extra MB since they share the cache and it's not dedicated to either virtual processor. Users Say there is a HUGE difference going from the 1mb to 2 mb version @ the same clock!

That chaintech board is crap, doesn’t even have basic monitoring, the sempron kid of stupid to waste cash on it because it will be worth so much less in about 30days... people that have been waiting will upgrade and sell their old and now obsolete and useless stuff....

(chain tech is a value o cheap'o board maker)

If you don't think of the future when you build a system @ this time
you'll deserve what you get....

Matth

As with many technologies, it either hits the spot or it doesn't.

As for "future proof", every time I've come to the point of upgrading, my "future proof" motherboard has not been up to the task.


My old Socket 7 (MMX capable) got a mild upgrade to a MMX CPU from an old Cyrix, but not a huge increase... Super 7 might have lasted longer.

My old 200FSB + ISA slots AMD motherboard was kitted out with a 1200B - no practical upgrade later... a 266FSB may have stretched further.

Now, a 3.2GHz P4-640 on an "OEM" MSI board - and by the time it needs upgrading, I bet they change the CPU format again!

Jaded? you bet!

With some logic though, I've almost followed the advice I recall, that you really want to be looking at a 3x increase in CPU speed to really feel it - and even then, Windoze still takes just as long to boot, despite faster HDD, more RAM, faster CPU.

The_Neon_Cowboy

My point being you can't us 64bit software on a 32 bit processor and you can o/c just as high with a real AMD64, especially if you get the mobile version....

For example / for reference newegg prices...

Sempron 2800+ $88.99 1.6GHz 128K L2
Sempron 3000+ $99.00 1.8 GHz 128K L2
Sempron 310+ $99.00 1.8 GHz 256 L2
AMD64 2800+ 1.8GHZ $109.00 (64bit 512k L2 cache)
AMD64 3000+ 1.8GHZ $135.00 (64bit 1mb L2 cache) (o/cing people hitting up to 2.85ghz+ )

A little more of this $$$ = a CPU that will last you well into next year even if you go 64bit

Not to mention they o/c just as well if not better

Zelig

That's pretty rare though, from what I've seen, the vast majority of Athlon 64/FX cpus can't get much past 2.7Ghz. Though Semprons also don't have dual channel memory...

The only 3000+ at 1.8Ghz is the S939 one, which has a 512Mb L2 cache btw. The only S939 processors with 1MB chaches are the FX53, FX55 and 4000+.

I'm hoping to get my 3000+ I've ordered up to around 2.6Ghz on air without too much overvolting. : )

Meaker

That 3000 is 512k cache actually.

The_Neon_Cowboy

My point is really their good overclockers

CrapolaJola

abut that 1mb vs 2mb cache on p4s havign a biff perf diff ur wrong, its about the same. 2mb L2 cache is good neon, but it adds so much latency that it just about offsets the advantages of the 2mb.

Zardon

In theory yes that sounds good, but in real life unfortunately in regards to the prescott and new series with double the level 2 cache, this doesnt translate into much if any gains as the latencies of this cache are looser. The older Gallatin Extreme edition with 512k of level 2 and 2 meg of level 3 was overall a better performer (also taking into consideration the tighter pipelines). The only time ive seen the 1 meg of extra level 2 cache help was with some rendering applications.