Thoughts
Value or budget processors are big business. It stands to reason that more midrange PCs, equipped with value-orientated components, will outsell premium models. That's a statement of fact. It's imperative, then, that AMD and Intel harness and adopt the technologies found in cutting-edge home CPUs into value models. AMD's tried to raise market awareness by rebranding a select range of Athlon XP processors as Semprons. It's also hinted at future value plans by including a Sempron-branded model that's based largely on the present Athlon 64 processor. Socket A Sempron performance is predictably good; we've become accustomed to it over the past couple of years. The Socket 754 Sempron 3100+, however, is a substantially better processor, both architecturally and performance-wise.Intel's successfully transplanted its Prescott core into Celeron form. The results have been encouraging, too. Where once the Pentium 4 Celeron languished way behind AMD's Socket A XPs, the present Celeron D is a reasonable performer in most regards. Cache improvements and a multitude of architectural changes allows for Socket A Sempron-matching performance. It also scales exceptionally well. Intel, I feel, will have few problems in raising Celeron D clock speed over the next 6 months.
Which value processor should you choose?. If your budget resembles a shoestring then a bottom-end Sempron (Socket A, obviously) or Celeron D 320 are the natural choices. Both CPUs have a number of cheap-ish supporting motherboards that often feature integrated video as standard. If your budget is set a little higher, say, at £80 for a processor (or ~£150 for a processor/motherboard bundle), AMD's K8-class Sempron 3100+ is comfortably the best choice. It's just a shame that it's been stripped of 64-bit goodness, though.
- AMD Sempron 2800+ (S462)
- AMD Sempron 3100+ (S754)
- Intel Celeron D 335
