X-bit labs

Your Value 64 Bits: AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU Review (page 10)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 08/29/2005 | 12:14 PM ]

Conclusion

It would be a stretch of the term “low-end” to apply it to the AMD Sempron 3400+ processor this article has been about. First, its price is rather high for a low-end solution, being $134. Second, this processor is not low-end in terms of performance, challenging junior models from the mainstream sector. As our tests have shown, the price of the Sempron 3400+ accurately matches its speed which is similar to Athlon 64 3000+ for Socket 754 and Socket 939 systems.

As for functionality, the Sempron 3400+ only differs from Athlon 64 processors in having a smaller L2 cache (256 kilobytes). The rest of the features and technologies implemented in Athlon 64 series CPUs are all available in the new Sempron 3400+, too. On our part, we are pleased the most with the introduction of AMD64 technology in the value CPU family.

Our comparative tests of the Sempron 3400+ and Intel’s Celeron 351 show that AMD’s value processor delivers more performance in a majority of applications, especially in games where the Sempron 3400+ is nearly 50% faster than the competing solution. Thus, we can state that the Sempron 3400+ is currently the best choice in its price category.

Another nice thing about this product is its good overclockability. We managed to increase the clock rate of our sample to 2.6GHz. Working at this frequency, the Sempron 3400+ is just a little slower than the Athlon 64 3800+ which costs as much as $329.

Considering the support of SSE3 and 64-bit extensions in the new processor, it has only one downside, namely its design for Socket 754. The Socket 939 platform looks a more appealing solution today since it offers more upgrade opportunities. On the other hand, the Socket 939 platform is approaching the end of its lifecycle, too, and processors for the M2 socket are going to become AMD’s flagship products in the next year.