"Xeno Chauvin" wrote in message
...
Wanting to build a new machine and can't find
info on AMD site comparing XP with Sempron.
Since the Sempron is much cheaper for supposedly
the same speed chip there must be a reason?
Anyone know what the differences are?

The reason it is much cheaper is that you are getting much less speed with a
misleading speed rating. The Sempron rating is supposed to compare it's
speed to the Intel P4 Celeron lineup. But of course most people looking at
the box or websites assume the name equates to other AthlonXP speeds. It
doesn't. The Sempron 2400+ has a 166Mhz bus, clock speed of 1667Mhz, 256Kb
L2 Tbred core. This is identical to the speed of an Athlon XP 2000+ which
has a 256Kb L2 Tbred core and 1667Mhz. They're mostly overpriced
underperforming marketing hype. The Sempron 2400+ will perform slightly
better than the Athlon XP2000+ due to the 133Mhz FSB of the XP200+. The only
one worth considering is the Barton cored Sempron 3000+, with has 512Mb L2
and a core speed of 2000Mhz. This is identical to the Barton XP2800+.
There's also a Socket 754 Sempron which has a crippled, slow A64 core that's
not worth the money either.