Help with Sempron

[i30i3i3y]

Hi

I'm thinking of making a budget sempron system but the only thing that worries me is the fact that you have to update the bios on most motherboards.

I've read different things in different places, some say you have to put a duron/athlon in, update bios then put the sempron in. Others say the Sempron works fine out of the box just gets shown as a athlon during boot.

I'd use either an Asus A7N8X, an Abit NF7-S or NF7-S2. Even though its a budget machine I'm going for a fairly good motherboard as to leave upgrading options open.

Would a sempron work out of the box on these boards? How much hassle will it be?

Thanks.

 

[Flinx]

For the price difference, about $50 its not worth building a sempron based system. Here check out this very recent article

<A HREF="http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=390" target="_new">http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=390</A>
Look at the huge performance difference between a nonoverclocked Sempron and and A64. Even the overclocked version can't keep up.

The Semprons are looking like Intel Celerons.

The loving are the daring!

 

[tweebel]

The Sempron will most likely work out of the box. It might not show it is a Sempron but that doesn't matter.
If you really want to go with socket A which is a dead end anyway (no future upgrading because there will not be any faster cpu's) your only choice would be to buy a Mobile Athlon 2500+ and overclock it to 2.4 GHz. Even that one is likely to be outperformed by the socket 754 Sempron 3100+. It simply is not worth the money unless you can get either the mobo or cpu for free.

 

[i30i3i3y]

Thanks for the input.

I understand your point about spending that little bit extra for A64, but this really is a budget system. Already stretching it as it is. All the pc will be used for is browsing the net and stuff no hard work at all (the old duron 800MHz system died).

Trying to get the best bang for my buck and sempron is the way to go. Making a reliable system for as little as possible. Just needed assurance that it wouldn't be more hassle than its worth (BIOS update and all).