Price/Performance Comparison and Conclusion
Price vs Performance Comparisons
Because this is a cost-minded product that we are reviewing, I wanted to bring back our Price / Performance tables that I introduced in my Athlon 64 2800+ review. These allow you to see, at a glance, what a particular product can earn you for your money on a particular benchmark or rating. These are not end-all answers to your buying decisions, but they can give you a clearer view of how your money is spent.
First, we wanted to look at our initial test systems — the complete AMD Sempron 2800+ platform against the complete Intel Celeron D 335 platform. As you can recall, our total system price for the Sempron was $439 and the total system price for the Celeron was $445.
This table below shows you some of the gaming benchmarks, and how their price / performance ratios worked out. We simply divided the FPS or score by the price of the total system to get a ratio of either FPS per dollar or 3DMarks per dollar, and the higher the number the better. Winning scores are placed in bold to easily spot.
Unreal Tournament 2003: 640x480x32 | |||
---|---|---|---|
Avg FPS | Price | FPS Per Dollar | |
Sempron 2800+ |
102.9 |
$439 |
0.23 |
Celeron D 335 |
99.5 |
$445 |
0.22 |
Quake III: 1024x768x32 MAX | |||
Sempron 2800+ |
104.2 |
$439 |
0.23 |
Celeron D 335 |
69.3 |
$445 |
0.15 |
3D Mark 2001: SE: 1024x768x32 | |||
Sempron 2800+ |
4485 |
$439 |
10.21 |
Celeron D 335 |
4315 |
$445 |
9.69 |
The AMD Sempron 2800+ system did win all the gaming value results here, but both UT2003 and 3D Mark 2001 were very close and thus could be considered a tie. The Quake III results stand out showing you that the similar priced Sempron system can give you a 53% better FPS / $ gaming system for your money.
Business Winstone 2004 | |||
---|---|---|---|
Points | Price | Points Per Dollar | |
Sempron 2800+ |
20.3 |
$439 |
4.62* |
Celeron D 335 |
17.1 |
$445 |
3.84* |
Sysmark 2004 – Internet Content Creation | |||
Sempron 2800+ |
143 |
$439 |
32.57* |
Celeron D 335 |
143 |
$445 |
32.13* |
PCMark04: Overall | |||
Sempron 2800+ |
3123 |
$439 |
7.11 |
Celeron D 335 |
3336 |
$445 |
7.49 |
* scaled by 100% for readability
This next table shows some application testing results and the corrolating price / performance ratios. The Sempron 2800+ system has a 20% better ratio than the Celeron D system on Business Winstone but the Celeron wins over the Sempron in the PCMark04 test by about 5.5%.
MP3 Encoding | |||
---|---|---|---|
Time | Price | Time Per Dollar | |
Sempron 2800+ |
200 |
$439 |
4.55* |
Celeron D 335 |
218 |
$445 |
4.89* |
DivX 5.1.1 Encoding | |||
Sempron 2800+ |
105.14 |
$439 |
2.39* |
Celeron D 335 |
122.06 |
$445 |
2.74* |
* scaled by 100% for readability
This table shows two additional benchmarks and their price / performance comparisons. The first is MP3 encoding, and since it’s based on time, and the lower the score the better, the lower the ratio the better. So the Sempron 2800+ system wins that result, though the Celeron D 335 system is faster than the Sempron system for DivX encoding.
Conclusion
The release of AMD’s Sempron K7 processor is really nothing to be overly excited about, as it is the same product we have seen for some time. However, it is a reason for the budget market to take the time to re-evaluate itself and where the competition stands. The Sempron 2800+ processor is a good performer for the money but is not the overwhelming success that the Duron was in its day. Intel’s Celeron D processor sports some nice features and high enough clock speeds to keep it running right along side the Sempron in most scenarios; it’s lack of HyperThreading is really all that is holding it back.
Both the Sempron and the Celeron have a lot of good products behind them as they are based on the previous generation of platforms. AMD’s Socket A has been around for a long time and there are boards a-plenty for you to chose from making the perfect configuration for your Sempron processor easy to place. The Celeron is the same way: Socket 478 is very mature with a lot of support in all areas. Because of this, both the Sempron and the Celeron can be great choices for a new budget system for yourself or a family member.
What Sempron was meant to do is distinguish the Athlon name as the upper-echelon and create a new brand for their low-cost products, thus not degrading the name of their flagship and also hopefully slowing the cannibalization of more expensive processor sales. In this regard, I think the Sempron will do fantastic. If AMD wanted to once again dominate the low-cost market, all they would have to do is bump up their Sempron to use the Barton core with twice the L2 cache and maybe raise the FSB to the 400 MHz speed to get the added memory bandwidth. For now, they seem content with a smaller margin of victory over the Celeron.
Oh, and on that whole issue of the Sempron 3100+, based on the 754-pin socket, we’ll have much more on that in the very near future, as we are still beating on that CPU, coming together with some answers on just what you can do with a 32-bit only Athon 64 processor. Stay Tuned!
Check out some prices on the AMD Sempron 2800+!
Check out some prices on the Intel Celeron 335!