I only have a limited budget for a new CPU (I currently have an Athlon 2200 XP after my 2400 decided to die on me) and I'm not so sure which one is best. What's so special about these Sempron CPUs I'm seeing? I want something around about an Athlon 2600 - 2700 but are these Semprons a cheaper alternative or something?
Since AthlonXPs are discontinued your only option is SocketA Semprons. Yes they are a cheaper alternative. Unless your motherboard is a socket 754 your left with the not so great SocketA Sempron line. However dabs still have an AthlonXP 2800 barton for sale which should be good. Or a 2600+ barton for about £10 less. Dabs
Over here in the US, the XP2800 seems to be the best value, other than the XP2500. If it's cheap enough, you could always snag the XP3200.
Well, I have no problem getting hold of the Athlon XP CPUs ... I can get them from most places and even eBay. I'm not intending overclocking it but I need a decent one for games etc. But which would give me more bang for my buck? Athlon or Sempron? Thanks!
Athlon. A Sepr0n 2400+ runs slower than an Athlon XP2400+, like 1.67GHz vs 2.0GHz. They do have a 166MHz FSB, but even then, any Athlon above the XP2400 uses the 166MHz (333MHz) FSB as well, not to mention the speeds are faster, and the cache is up to 512kB. Yeah, they do run a little more, but there's a reason for that. The Sempr0n's aren't bad, but since you're going to want some extra grunt, Athlon would be a better choice, at least for socket A. If you were looking for a cheap Socket 754 chip, I'd actually lean toward the Sempr0n because the price/performance is really good.
