Any problems with Sempron (vs Athlon) processor?

[Rober50]

The computer store told me they were phasing out the Athlon processors, and told me they could build me a box with the Sempron 2800+, 2X80GB hds, 1 GB RAM for under $400.00. I'm pretty happy with my Digi001 and plan to keep it. Mostly project studio stuff. Any anticipated problems with this rig?

[Aussie Scott]

Sempron is the poor cousin of the athlon processors - with a pretty small L2 cache. They are not listed on the compatability documentation - or in the 'not working' section for that matter. I can't say I've seen anyone use them here. Do a search to comfirm this. I'd say the general consensus is go athlon and not sempron. Sure they're phasing it out, but what does that matter if you're system is working?

Cheers, Scott

[WaxTrax!]

I believe the Sempron is kinda like the equivalent of the Intel Celeron in that a Sempron is an Athlon with less cache memory, just like a Celeron is just a Pentium with less cache memory.

[strat585]

The Sempron is a 32-bit proc while the Athlon runs at 64-bit. The Sempron also only runs
half of the L2 cache that the Athlon runs.

As for perfomance, I would assume the Athlon and Sempron are similar up to a point, overall
the Athlon will outrun a Sempron at the same speed, just as Intel's Pentium vs. Celeron.

[WaxTrax!]

Well, the plain Sempron is a cut down version of an Athlon XP, which is only 32-bit.

BUT, there is a Sempron 64 chip that is a cut down version of the Athlon 64

[RMX_Ste]

Speaking of which (sorry to digress..) - can PT use the 64 bit capability of the Athlon 64? I'm not at all sure how the 64-bit thing works, and haven't gotten around to updating to Win64 yet - do you need to use a 64bit operating system to run a 64 bit application?

[WaxTrax!]

Yup, you have to have a 64-bit OS like XP x64 otherwise the CPU runs in 32-bit mode.

And nope, PT will not work in XP x64.