News AMD sneaks out Sempron 3000+

AMD rolled out it's latest Sempron 'under cloak' this week, according to elReg:

AMD this week added a 3000+ rated processor to its 32-bit Sempron desktop chip line-up.

The $123 part was added to the company's price list without fanfare. Unlike previously announced Semprons the new part contains 512KB of L2 cache - the others have 256KB.

Indeed, the older Sempron 2800+ is, like the new model, clocked at 2GHz, with the bigger cache accounting for the higher performance rating. The 256KB L2 Sempron 3100+ achieves its higher-still rating despite a 1.8GHz clock frequency thanks to it being a Socket 754 Athlon 64 chip in disguise.

No, there's no more here, being as that's the full text.


AMD is known to be preparing Socket 939, Athlon 64-derived Semprons, courtesy of an Nvidia announcement, due to ship later this year. ®

 

So the 3000+ Sempron is essentially a 2500+ Barton? Is there a price difference?

 

I thought Semprons were essentially just Durons... but upgraded in a way.

Someone please please tell me what the hell a Sempron is.. thx

 

Now that's confused my "AMD marketing range" ideas. Why have 939 budgets? To encourage 939 sales??

 

According to this months PC-Plus, Sempron (up to 2800+) is essentially a Thoroughbred XP; same 128K L1, 256K L2, same CPUID. But FSB clock has been boosted from 266MHz to 333MHz. Equivalent XPs will be dropped.

Sempron 3100+ will be Socket 754, based on 1.8GHz Athlon64 Newcastle core, but 256K L2 instead of 512Kb, HyperTransport link slowed from 2GHz max to 1.6GHz. Also no support for x86-64 extensions, not a big loss as not a lot of 64-bit s/w ATMIT .

As PC-Plus say, 3100+ is an upgradeable budget route to Socket 754 until 64-bit software arrives (but Athlon is going Socket 939 as said, so .).

See also http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/processors/sempron/