AMD SEMPRON 3100 REVIEW

"In this article we test the AMD Sempron 3100 cpu against the Athlon XP 3200 and XP 2500. The following software was used, Half Life 2, Doom3, Far Cry, Tribes Vengeance, Warhammer Dawn of War, Xpand Rally, Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake III Arena, 3dmark 2001-2005, SiSoftware Sandra 2005, Cpu Bench 2003, Metabench, Kribi Bench, Realstorm and Science Mark 2."

AMD Sempron processors for desktop and mobile products offer best in class performance, compatibility with all the applications you need, and the reliability of AMD processors. Best-in-class performance for everyday computing. The AMD Sempron™ processor performs at the top of its class when running the home and business applications that you need most. Full-featured to improve your computing experience. The AMD Sempron™ processor lets you enjoy a dynamic Internet experience with smooth streaming video and audio. Compatible with leading operating systems and over 60,000 of the world’s most popular software applications. Enjoy reliable, responsive performance on thousands of software applications—including those that let you communicate with family and friends. With 35 years of design and manufacturing experience, you can count on AMD to deliver innovative solutions that meet real customer needs.

Today we are looking at the AMD Sempron 3100 processor which is the fastest Sempron cpu currently available (atleast until the AMD Sempron 3300 becomes available). The previous Sempron processors used Socket A but the AMD Sempron 3100 is strictly Socket 754 only. Although the AMD Sempron 3100 is mostly an Athlon64 processor it does have a few differences. The AMD Sempron 3100 has 64bit support disabled so it's only a 32bit processor and it also only has 256k L2 Cache unlike the Athlon64's 512k cache.

INTEGRATED MEMORY CONTROLLER - Improves the memory performance by integrating a DDR memory controller into the processor. By running at the processor’s core frequency, an integrated memory controller greatly increases bandwidth directly available to the processor at significantly reduced latencies.

COOL'N'QUIET - "In the past, increased processor performance has often meant increased power consumption and increased noise levels. AMD Cool‘n’Quiet™ technology is an innovative solution available on AMD Athlon™ 64 processor-based systems that can effectively lower the power consumption and enable a quieter-running system while delivering performance on demand, for the ultimate computing experience."

NX BIT - "With the power of AMD64 technology, your computer has security built right in. The combination of AMD64 technology with Windows XP SP2 can help your system to better withstand attacks from certain classes of viruses. This can help you experience safer e-mail and Internet browsing."

MPEG ENCODING SECONDS (LOWER IS BETTER) 351 315 373 AMD SEMPRON 3100 AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 COMMENT - "Even though the Sempron 3100 is clocked at 1.8Ghz which is the same as the Athlon XP 2500 it is able to outperform the Athlon XP 2500 by 11%. The Athlon XP 3200 with it's 400mhz speed advantage shows that with mpeg encoding the Sempron 3100 can't touch it and beats the Sempron 3100 by a 11% (36 seconds)"

REALSTORM 2004 OVERALL 2210 2187 1870 AMD SEMPRON 3100 AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 COMMENT - "using Realstorm 2004 was a close performance between the Sempron 3100 and Athlon XP 3200 processors, however there can be only one winner and the Sempron 3100 outperformed the Athlon XP 3200 by a modest 2%."

SCIENCE MARK 2 MOLECULAR DYNAMICS (LOWER IS BETTER) 96 75 92 AMD SEMPRON 3100 AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 COMMENT - "This is pure number crunching and the Athlon XP 3200 does very well and beats the Sempron 3100 by 22%. The biggest surprise was that the Athlon XP 2500 also outperformed the Sempron 3100 by 5% which was very unexpected."

SISOFTWARE SANDRA 2005 PROCESSOR - ALU DHRYSTONE 8254 9010 7471 PROCESSOR - FPU WHETSTONE 3832 3550 2947 AMD SEMPRON 3100 AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 COMMENT - "Using SiSoftware Sandra 2005 the Athlon XP 3200 puts in a convincing display and beats the Sempron 3100 by 9% using the Dhrystone test. Using the fpu Whetstone test the Sempron 3100 shows that it's a superior fpu processor by beating the Athlon XP 3200 by a convincing 8%."

SISOFTWARE SANDRA 2005 MULTI-MEDIA - INTEGER 17214 20665 17078 MULTI-MEDIA - FLOATING POINT 18581 22065 18312 AMD SEMPRON 3100 AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 COMMENT - "This SiSoftware Sandra 2005 Multi-Media test appears to favour a high clock speed, this is shown very clearly with the Sempron 3100 and Athlon XP 2500 (both are 1.8Ghz processors) performing within 1% of each other. The Athlon XP 3200 with it's 2.2GHZ of processing power wins this test by a very impressive 18%."

SISOFTWARE SANDRA 2005 MEMORY BANDWIDTH - INTEGER 2751 2731 2355 MEMORY BANDWIDTH - FLOATING POINT 2751 2552 2207 AMD SEMPRON 3100 AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 COMMENT - "We are now using SiSoftware Sandra 2005 Memory Bandwidth test, we want to see how efficent each of the processors can access memory. The Sempron 3100 with it's integrated memory controller wins this test fairly easily especially with the floating point memory test which it wins by 8%."