The AMD Sempron (NON-64) just an Athlon XP with a new name?
 

I have a sempron lying around my room that I pulled out of my computer when I pluged my AMD Athlon XP 3000+ in. But I wondered what exactly is a sempron? So I took some time and researched it, found most of the information (who knows how how much of it is fact) at wikipedia.org. From what I understand, the new low end processors for AMD that replaced the Duron are just about equivlent to standard AMD Athlon XP processors (exluding Sempron 64, which from what I understand is not the real name). The clock speed on the 3000+, which I am using so it parallel with my AMD Athlon XP 3000+, is only a 100 or so Mhz slower then my Athlon. And I also noticed that it is cheaper by sometimes upwards of 60 dollars. I'm not processor detail savy, but, how much of a difference is there in specs and performance are there between my Athlon XP 3000+ and the Sempron 3000+ Socket A?

For easy comparison, the sempron competes with the intel celeron line of CPUs. I believe the athlon CPUs are still in comparison with intel pentium CPUs.

So that means that I could have bought a sempron 3000+ for less then my Athlon and I could have more or less the same performance? Or am I still ignorant about something?

All depends on what you want to do. If you don't use any advanced and intensive applications, then they will both essentially give you the same performance. In that case you should go with the Sempron. If you play games and use highly intensive programs, it's most certainly worth the money to go with an Athlon. Just compare this situation to your choice between Celeron and Pentium. It's more-or-less the same debate.

My brother-in-law and his wife had run a little test to see how the computers stand up, here are the specs:

AMD athlon 3000+ 64bit home-built (me)
1 gig ddr400 ram
160gb 7200 rpm 8mb cache drive ide

PENT W/ht 3.0 Gateway (bro)
1 gig ddr400 ram
250gb sata drive

SEMPRON 3200+ 64 bit Gateway (sis in law)
512 gig ddr ram
100gb ide drive

Fresh install of windowsXP service pack 2 boot times:
me=18secs
bro=30secs
sis=58secs

multi tasking launching firefox while in doom3:
me=40secs
bro=12secs
sis=1minute2secs

The pentium multi tasks a little better then my athlon due to hyper threading. On single apps I woop my bro-in-law at about everything. Doom3 launches on mine about 6 secs faster on mine then on pent, sempron is way out there with times at around 45 secs slower then mine. I know this might not hold any water as far as a benchmark but I tell you for sure the sempron is by far the slowest of the 3!

Ok thank you guys, I feel much better now! :>

I wouldn't necessarily base your impression of Semprons only on the review above. Different reviewers say very different things. The general consensus I've seen seems to be that the Celeron and Sempron are about equal. But do your own research. Tom's Hardware is a good starting point. The processor is a very important piece of hardware so you need to do your research and get multiple opinions.

Sempron? Why settle for anything less an AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core?

Heck, I could barely afford the Athlon 3200 when I bought it...