[title]AMD Athlon 64 3200+ vs. Sempron 3100+ Review[/title]
The key players in the processor industry being Intel and AMD, both offer cut down versions of their flagship products. For example the cut down version of the Intel Pentium4 processor is known as the Celeron. Currently the AMD equivalent is known as the Sempron and this processor is available in two different forms. The Sempron has been released for both the Socket A and 754-pin platforms. Often readers ask if they should purchase a 754-pin Athlon64 or Sempron and is the $50 US price premium worth it for the Athlon64 processor.
Normally, I would say fork out the extra $50 for the more powerful processor, though this advice is based on Pentium 4/Celeron performance. The Celeron is not even half the processor that the Pentium 4 is, in my opinion. However, on paper the Sempron looks far more promising than the Celeron, offering a much larger L1 Cache a better L2 Cache, more bandwidth and a lower operating temperature. However, neither the Sempron or Celeron are 64-bit enabled processors. Nevertheless, the question still remains, is the Sempron worth saving $50 on? After all you will be using the same motherboard, memory and graphics card as you would with the Athlon64.
Even a budget gaming system is going to cost a pretty penny after purchasing a graphics card for $200 US, memory for $100 US a motherboard for $100 US and then the processor. When spending this kind of money a $50 US saving is quite substantial. However, the question is will the user pay more in the long run for saving $50 US by purchasing the Sempron 3100+ over the Athlon64 3200+ for example? This article has been dedicated to answer this commonly asked question by pitching these two processors against one another.
Generally, when a low to mid-range processor is purchased for a gaming system some form of overclocking will take place. This is done to help the slightly under achieving processor reach the performance levels of its more expensive, higher clocked versions. Therefore, I have not only decided to pitch the AMD Athlon64 3200+ against a standard Sempron 3100+, but also an overclocked configuration as well. Given the Sempron's thermal output is almost 30watts lower than that of the Athlon64, overclocking was quite successful.
When overclocking a budget processor such as the AMD Sempron 3100+ the decision was made to stick with the standard OEM cooler. I then simply added an extra 120mm fan to increase the air-flow over the processor area of the motherboard. The reason for sticking with the standard OEM cooler and not a water cooling setup or even a $50 US air-cooled heatsink, is because I feel this is not what most people will couple with a Sempron like processor.
Given a good air-cooled heatsink will almost cost half as much as the processor itself, this is not an efficient method of cooling this particular processor. Although the OEM heatsink will not push the processor as far as an after market item, it will give you a good idea of what can be achieved right out of the box. That said I was able to reach a 266MHz FSB using the standard 9x multiplier on the Sempron 3100+. I believe this to be an exceptional overclock given what the processor was working with. This brought the processor frequency up from 1.8GHz to 2.4GHz and as you are about to find out, this did aid in the Sempron's performance somewhat.
