Is the Sempron a budget line that costs more?

Tom's Hardware points out that AMD wanted a budget line which did not
detract from the name "Athlon" and so AMD created the Sempron which are for
the most part nothing much more than old-style Athlons.

At the same time the equivalent Athlon models have been withdrawn.

Someone pointed out that the Sempron costs more than the equivalent Athlon
cpu they replace.

So have we now got a situation where a newly-launched budget line (Sempron)
actaully costs MORE than the equivalent mainstream line (Athlon) of the same
power?

I hope i have got soemthing wromg there!

 

It looks about right. The Sempron XP2500 is just about £1 less than an
Athlon XP2500, even though it has half of the L2 cache.

Quite how the S754 Semprons line up against the A64s though, I'm not sure.

JW

 

Yes, for the time being you have it right, Sempron is higher
priced. They are expected to o'c higher than the T'Bred B,
on average, since they're desending from Thorton, but
Thorton cores are also cheaper, and AFAIK, all Semprons are
locked, though I could be wrong about that?

I expect that eventually the Semprons will drop in price,
but for the time being anyone building on socket A ought to
snatch up a Barton while they still can.

 

AND a lower speed!

XP2200+ is 1.8ghz, Sempron 2200+ is 1.5ghz.

 

It does have a faster bus thou 166 not 133 and costs £31 compared to around
£40 for the XP

 

Agreed. While AMD is officially selling the Semprons to suppliers for
less than the XP line (check their pricing page at amd.com), the high
volume of low-priced Athlon XPs means that they (AXP) are the better buy
for right now. However, once vendors and retailers start paying the
high prices for the Athlon XP labeled chips across the board, consumers
will see a change. Then the Semprons will be the better choice as the
AXP label fades into oblivion and premium prices. Also, it is probably
in AMD's best interests to move the Athlon name solely to its mainstream
and high-performance product lines (doing so makes AMD less vulnerable
to Intel attacks comparing Athlons (XP) to new P4s (EE and the like)).

 

Are you saying that matching "performance for performance" the Semprons are
ever so slightly cheaper?

I have done the data gathering or data comparison but several posters here
seem to say that the Sempron is more expensive than the equivalent Athlon.

Maybe one new variable is the performance of the Sempron and the chip's
clock speed. The chart on this page matches up the Sempron and Athon
according to their clock speed.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040728/sempron-01.html

I don't kmow how reliable AMD's "+" figure is in idnicating throughput
power, so I don't know if I can take at face value that these two cpus are
equivalent:

2500+ Sempron (1.75 GHz, FSB 333, T'bred-B core)
2500+ Athlon (1.92 GHz, FSB 333, Barton core)

[Data taken from page linked above.]

Surely these two are not equivalent in terms of power?

 

They aren't. The Sempron, if rated with the same suite of benchmarks
Athlon XP's are rated with, would rate as a 2100+. All Semprons are rated
with a set of benchmarks to compare them to Celerons clock speeds and the
resulting PR number reflects that. not compared P4's or even XP's. IF you
subtract 400 from every Semprons number, you will get the approximate
Athlon rating. So a Sempron 2200+ would [erforme the same as an Athlon
1800+, etc. And you can take that to the bank.

 

Good information. It would be a terrible thing to learn after buying one.

 

Good info and that explains a LOT.

 

So that makes them even less value for money then!
With computer hardware something new is usually better and often cheaper,
doesn't seem to be the case here.

Are AMD in trouble and need to hike the price up on their products?

 

Interesting. So the table which I referred to in my earlier posting

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040728/sempron-01.html

has got it about right by comparing clock speeds because this does indeed
give approximately that 400 unit difference in the "+" rating which you
point out.

In which case that must mean that a given Sempron costs even more than the
corresponding Athlon of equivalent power?

Has anyone compared actual prices?

 

Dear Lord. What a mess.

 

That is true of the top end semptrons but the 2200 semptron is £31 and
cheaper than the 1600 duron and gives a better bang for your buck at the
bottom end of the market

 

How much faster is th sempron 2200+ than a Duron 1600?

 

as said earlier its about XP1800 speed Although it may be slightly faster
dur to its higher bus speed

 

I calculate that the Sempron here in the UK is currently approx 25 percent
more expensive than the equivalent Athlon .


My local PC dealer is doing these prices (inc VAT) on boxed retail cpus:

Sempron 2400+ £49 ($80)
Sempron 2500+ £57
Sempron 2600+ £64

Athlon 2200+ £50
Athlon 2400+ £59
Athlon 2500+ £62
Athlon 2600+ £69

If the Sempron 2600+ at £64 is the equivalent power of the Athlon 2200+ (see
earlier this thread) which is £50 then the Sempron is 28 percent more
expensive.

----

My local dealer is a bit expensive because Simply Computers were doing these
Athlon prices (inc VAT) for retail boxed cpu's:

Athlon 2200+ £48
Athlon 2400+ £51
Athlon 2500+ £59
Athlon 2600+ £65

and now that Simply have dropped almost all of those Athlons and they are
selling these:

Sempron 2500+ £53
Sempron 2600+ £59

So at Simply the Sempron 2600+ is £59 and is the equivalent power to the
Athlon 2200+ which is £48, making the Sempron 23 percent more expensive.

----

Maybe the Sempron is showing the premium paid for new processors and soon
the price will tumble?

But surely that new processor pricing model shouldn't be applied to their
Sempron because they are essentially Athlons which have been in production
for some time.

 

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:40:22 +0100, Aaron S

New products entering a market are often priced a bit too
high, then price normalizes after demand is less than
anticipated, or lower than production. It is still a bit
odd though, even a lowly Duron 1.6 is going for $48 on
pricewatch, seems like it should've dropped to $38 already.

 

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:40:22 +0100, Aaron S

New products entering a market are often priced a bit too
high, then price normalizes after demand is less than
anticipated, or lower than production. It is still a bit
odd though, even a lowly Duron 1.6 is going for $48 on
pricewatch, seems like it should've dropped to $38 already.

 

What if demand is greater than anticipated or greater than production?

Why? They probably aren't being made any longer. Perhaps soon
the supply of Athlon XP chips might start dwindling?