Gaming PC

[Snoop]

sempron is a budget cpu.

939 chipsets have dual channel ddr 754 dont.

he said he wanted a gaming rig

semprons only have 256k l2 cache compared to the athlon 64's 512k or 1024k depending on wether you get a winchester or clawhammer

that extra l2 cache is going to make a massive difference in games.

btw amd 64 3200+ winchester core can do 2.5ghz on air if he ever plans on overclocking

if he is prepared to wait a month he could get an NForce 4 motherboard which are only going to be made in socket939 and will be PCI-Express

[Drewdatrip]

Ya if you plan to go the amd 64 route, id reccomend taking snoops advice, there is defenatly somthing to be said about the additional cache and the dual chan mem ...ie you can expect another 15-20% of performance where it counts.

I know every freakin overclocking Duron and Semperon nut job is gonna come out of the wood work here, but saving a 100 bucks or so is not worth the stability and versitilty of a top end CPU with the bonus in cache and the current technology of Dual chan memory.

If High end gaming and horsepower is what you want and need dont skimp when it comes to these features.

PS- Snoop is a Bacon and egg sandwitching eating n00b!

|Drew|

[CoffeeFiend]

The cache and double memory bandwidth don't make anything near that much difference at all. Memory bandwidth is only about 3%, and cache wise, it doesn't affect the cpu much either, unlike it would on a P4. And the Sempron being clocked so much faster, that sempron will run today at almost the same speed as a Athlon 64 4000 will.

Stability wise, it is very stable they say (only the CPU runs faster, not the rest of the system-which is most of the problem usually). I'm not a overclocking fan by any means (at least when it comes to water cooling and stuff like that to save 20$ on a faster CPU) but this one is a killer. And again, Memory bandwidth and cache don't make such a big difference at all (it's a lot more about low latencies than memory bandwidth). It's more like 10% tops for both, nothing that will bring that Athlon 64 anywhere as fast as the sempron would run. The sempron 3100+ benches the same thing as a Athlon 64 2800 on most tests, OC'ed, it just slaughters it - also on memory bandwitdh benches even though the memory bandwidh is lower and that the L2 cache is smaller...

Athlon 64's don't overclock well at all (they're already clocked to the limit, and bigger die size won't help either), and socket 939 isn't good for that either from what most places say.

Of course, if you can afford the athlon 64 4000 now and get a nforce 4 board next week... The Athlon 64 is nicer, but I like the more for less idea. Socket 939 doesn't deliver more performance right now (even for more money), and as you'll need to upgrade, you'll be getting another board anyways... So I hardly see any benefit to it for now or later. If you really don't want to OC at all then I suppose the Athlon 64 might be a better pick for you.

[Snoop]

Athlon 64's don't overclock well at all (they're already clocked to the limit, and bigger die size won't help either), and socket 939 isn't good for that either from what most places say.

the new 90nm core ones do.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2242&p=5

As you can see, the 3500+ and the 3000+ both topped out at about 2.6GHz (anticipated FX55 speed) with default or modestly increased CPU voltage and air cooling. This is a decent overclock of about 20% on the 3500+, but the 3000+ reached the same 2.6GHz overclock from a much lower stock speed of 1.8GHz. This means that the new 90nm 3000+ overclocked an outstanding 45% with modest increases in CPU voltage.

l2 cache means alot in games though

[brian873]

Cheers Snoop more info for me.

hail hail