Sempron 3400+ faster than Athlon 3200+ (754) ?

[Blub]

hey guys,

I have this mobo (and everything else except mem and cpu) just sitting around. It's a 754, so I'd need an AMD to make it work. I was looking at what one could get nowadays and found these:

• Sempron 3400+: 2GHz, 256kb L2 Cache, FSB 333MHz, Palermo
  
• Athlon 64 3200+: 2.2GHz, 512kB L2 Cache, FSB 200MHz, Newcastle, HyperTransport-Bus 800MHz
  

This got me wondering: does anyone know which one is actually faster ? Oh, actually the Sempron is slightly cheaper as well.

[ripken204]

get the athlon 64 for multiple reasons, but dont get a newcastle, get a 3200 venice.

reasons for venice:

1.much better memory controller

2.2x as much cache

3.runs cooler

4.overclocks better

[ssmokee]

get the athlon 64 for multiple reasons, but dont get a newcastle, get a 3200 venice.

He is talking about s754...there are no venice core A64s. The palermo core (sempron) AFAIK is basically the s754 equivalent of the venice, and should run cooler and OC a lot better than the old newcastle core A64s.

I have this mobo (and everything else except mem and cpu) just sitting around.

What motherboard is it? If your motherboard is made for overclocking and you plan on taking advantage of it, I would go for the sempron. But, if you are just going to be running the CPU at stock speed the A64 is going to be a bit faster because of the 200MHz core speed advantage and double the L2 cache.

Edited November 3, 2005 by ssmokee

[Blub]

Thanks for the info first fo all.

What motherboard is it? If your motherboard is made for overclocking and you plan on taking advantage of it, I would go for the sempron. But, if you are just going to be running the CPU at stock speed the A64 is going to be a bit faster because of the 200MHz core speed advantage and double the L2 cache.

Motherbopard is an ASUS K8V-X. From the top of my head it is not great for overclocking because the BIOS doesn't allow the AGP and PCI clock to be locked. But I'd have to check to confirm this. To be honest I didn't really think about whether I eante to overclock it or not. Potentially I could build some reasonably powerful air cooling into the very bulk standard pc case the motherbopard is currently in, as I'd have parts for that as well.

By the way, am I correct in assuming that without the ability to lock the AGP etc, the potential for overclocking is not very good anyway? Maybe I should check the Asus website for latest bios to make sure this is the case.

[Andromeda43]

Sempron is to AMD as

Celeron is to Intel.

The common difference is in the amount of Cache.

The greater the cache, the greater the performance.

Pay less money and get less performance......that's just a fact of life.

Andromeda43

[Mekrel]

You are indeed correct about PCI/AGP locks holding back overclocking, as you raise the HTT of the system, so will the speed of all the buses and they dont like to be ran out of sync when you cannot lock them.

This will lead to boot problems as the controller will be on the PCI bus and general instability of other components.

I would go for the A64 Newcastle myself.

Edited November 5, 2005 by Mekrel

[Blub]

Looks like the A64 Newcastle is the best bet indeed. At least with my K8V-X motherboard ... I checked the Asus website http://www.asus.com to make sure there is not simply a bios update which would allow locking the AGP/PCI frequency.

I found this:

Due to the limitation of K8T800, AGP/PCI can not be locked when FSB overclocked.

So, not much overclocking potential with this board. Thanks guys for for your info.