Testbed and Methods

It was an exciting thing to get a Sempron 3400+ into our hands. Even though we regularly examine processors of this class, the new product from AMD set two new problems before us. First, we had never had an opportunity to test low-end processors in the 64-bit mode. Second, we were curious to know how low-end 64-bit CPUs perform at overclocking. This review is an attempt to answer both these questions and that’s why we performed all the tests in Windows XP Professional x64 Edition which will surely become a widespread operating system soon. We took an Intel Celeron D 351 processor as the main opponent to the Sempron 3400+. This is the senior model from Intel’s value series and it supports Intel’s 64-bit EM64T extensions. This CPU works at 3.2GHz, uses a 533MHz system bus and has a 256KB L2 cache. This processor cost just a little less than the AMD Sempron 3400+, so we think it is correct to compare these two processors between each other.

We also added the results of an overclocked Celeron D 351. Using air cooling and increasing the voltage of this CPU to 1.5V, we increased the frequency of our sample to 4GHz in our testbed, i.e. 25% above the default frequency. The FSB frequency grew up from 533 to 667MHz at that.

To put the performance of the Sempron 3400+ at the default and overclocked frequencies in better perspective, we also publish the results of an Athlon 64 3000+ for Socket 754 (with a single-channel memory controller) and for Socket 939 (with a dual-channel memory controller) as well as of an Athlon 64 3800+ processor.

So, here’s a full list of hardware parts we used in our tests:

• Processors:
• AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 512KB L2, Venice)
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939, 1.8GHz, 512KB L2, Venice)
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 754, 2.0GHz, 512KB L2, NewCastle)
• Sempron 3400+ (Socket 754, 2.0GHz, 256KB L2, Palermo revision E6)
• Intel Celeron D 351 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 256KB L2, 533MHz FSB, Prescott-256)
• Mainboards:
• ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe (LGA775, i945P)
• DFI NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939, NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra)
• DFI LANPARTY UT nF3 250Gb (Socket 754, NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb)
• Memory:
• Corsair CMX512-3200XL, 2x512MB, DDR400 SDRAM, 2-2-2-5
• Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL, 2x512MB, DDR2-533 SDRAM, 3-2-2-8
• Graphics card:
• PowerColor RADEON X800 XT (PCI Express x16)
• PowerColor RADEON X800 XT (AGP 8x)
• Disk subsystem: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (Serial ATA-150)

We want to remind you once again that all tests from this review were done in Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, the new 64-bit operating system from Microsoft.

We tried to use native 64-bit benchmarks where possible. We will say in each particular case what processor mode each benchmark runs in.