Good Socket A mobo

[Googer]

CraigRT,
The two perform almost the same, the differance is practicly with in margin of error, price to performance of 2800 is poor compaired to sempron 3100+.
The differance in speed is 1 frame per second in wolfenstein (79 vs 80 fps), studio max saved 1 second (230 vs. 231 seconds), and the cost differance for athlon 64 is 20-25% more than sempron; I did not see a 20% boost in performance over sempron to justify the added cost, It also pushes this guys budget over $200. Remember, he can always upgrade later when A64 can be had for less than $45, when he needs it.

 

[Googer]

quote taken directly from Anandtech

While this may seem like a downside at first, this will actually help out AMD. The K8 Sempron, if cache size doesn't hurt performance too much, will give AMD the ability to offer its current generation of performance to consumers at a lower price point.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...c.aspx?i=2139&p=14

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: ts3433

Originally posted by: Googer
At least the Sempron 3100 will perform better in 32bit than the A64 2800.

Give me a reputable link that demonstrates this with results outside a reasonable margin of error. I have a hard time believing this, partly because the A64's extra L2 cache should give it a slight advantage.

As for the 64-bit applications: what does that matter if the price difference is only $4? There's always the possibility of future utilization of those features. (FYI, I don't consider this a major selling point at the moment either. The Sempron 3100+ is still a fine processor--I just don't see any compelling reason to get it instead of the 2800+ unless the 3100+ retail is indeed available for $100.)

Cache on these chips makes very little differance, as we found out when AMD first cut it from 1024(1mb) to 512k there was little differance in the performance. Same can be said for the sempron's 256k It has not hurt it much because of the Intergrated (FSB) Memory Controller.

The smartest use of this mans money would be sempron now, is a $108 sempron 3100+ and Athlon 64 3500+ later for $40(in 2006/2007) when he actually needs it. Its not worth spending more for a lower rated processor with a feature he cannot use.


Sempron Is anands personal pick for a budget procssor
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2139

Thing is, that's also what was said of the Durons. Then, if you used a desktop with a Duron, it was barely slower than a Tbird. Now if you use a desktop with all modern software, it really feels slow. The price is so close that there's just no good reason for even risking that.

On your lower post, where are you getting a 20%+ price difference? It is 5%, not 20%. Less than 10% on the retail version.

 

[Googer]

The real world differance in most benchmarks is less than .5% to 1% . Just one second or one fps out of one hundred or more.

Thing is, that's also what was said of the Durons.

Can you provide me with a source to go with that quote, preferrably when the duron was released. I don't ever remeber seeing such thing being said about it. Everyone I knew at the time felt the lack of cache on a duron would hurt it.

The onboard memory controller, since it can retreve data quicker has made cpu cache less important than it used to be.


I think It's a better path to take 3500 later than a 2800 now. Around December of 2006 I Imagine he will be able to buy a 3400 or 3500 /512k For about $40. Because in 3 years he will not have either one of these CPU's. Since 32 bit applications will stil be around and 64bit just starting to break out, that would be a good time to upgrade to a faster cpu than both of us are now describing.