sempron 64 vs athlon 64

[Veatch]

I'm building a computer for a friend of mine, and I am trying to decide between getting a Sempron 64 2800 s754 or an Athlon 64 2800 s754. He'll mainly use the computer for basic word processing and web apps, and his kids will probably play some games (mostly strategy games, no graphics-heavy shooters or anything). He's probably going to have this computer for awhile: three years if not longer. I'm not sure if he'll want to upgrade to a new version of Windows when given the chance, but I'd like for him to at least have that option. The Sempron is almost $40 cheaper, and the only differences that I see in newegg's specs are different cores, slightly different clock speeds and process types, and a smaller L2 cache. Any thoughts and advice would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Go for the sempron, Why get the athlon if you don't really need it?

 

[ms2005]

I have Athlon 64 3800 Newcastle and a Sempron 64 Palerno core. The 3800 is a better gamer, but not by as much as you might think. The 90 nm Palermo runs much cooler and has much more overclocking headroom because of that. Palermo's also have SSE3 which is more of a future advantage.

One of the big problems with AMD is that there are many cores with the same clock rating and different characteristics - that is why newegg and the like quote proc code names. Look for 90 nm parts in either Athlons or Semprons.

 

[Vile]

That's because the Newcastle doesn't have SSE3, but the new 3800+ (Venice) does. So ya, your Sempron is probably newer than your 3800+ and that's why it's got SSE. Putting at it this way, Sempron are the value series, aka Celerons, yet better than them for a similar price.

 

[ShortyNumber45]

A non-64bit sempron would be still a better choice as it can save you some more bucks.