AMD Athlon or Sempron

fullerms

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I recently bought an MSI K9NU Neo-V which supports Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX and Sempron in the AM2 package.

I already have the following

Sapphire X1900XT 256Mb.
Corsair 2x1 Gb PC 6400 @ 4-4-4-12

I am a casual gamer, and this comp is for home use. The CPU I choose should not be an overkill, and at the same time should last me for some time.

Will be playing games like NFS Carbon, some flight sims, FIFA and Company of Heroes. Other applications will be home video editing and movies / music. OS will be Windows / Linux.

So brothers, which one for me? Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX or Sempron?

All ye fan boys, I already know about the wonders a C2D can do, thank you very much.
 

1Tanker

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I recently bought an MSI K9NU Neo-V which supports Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX and Sempron in the AM2 package.

I already have the following

Sapphire X1900XT 256Mb.
Corsair 2x1 Gb PC 6400 @ 4-4-4-12

I am a casual gamer, and this comp is for home use. The CPU I choose should not be an overkill, and at the same time should last me for some time.

Will be playing games like NFS Carbon, some flight sims, FIFA and Company of Heroes. Other applications will be home video editing and movies / music. OS will be Windows / Linux.

So brothers, which one for me? Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX or Sempron?

All ye fan boys, I already know about the wonders a C2D can do, thank you very much.
Athlon64 X2 would perform those duties best. Dual-core will really speed things up in video editing/encoding, and many games are destined to soon take advantage of multithreading. Dual-core is more "future-proof", while not costing that much more. I would suggest an X2 4200+. GL :)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103747
 

godman

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athlon x2 4200+ should do you good, if you fancy overclocking it should overclock to around 2.6ghz (or higher) as the whole x2 series overlclock well. :)
 

papi4baby

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I would have to go with the other guys too. X2 is the best choice for the kind of stuff you will be doing. If your concern is saving money, see if you can find a X2 3600.
 

fullerms

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Thanks brothers,

Will go with the x2 4200+. BTW any price reductions expected in the coming weeks? Looking to build during the first or second week of December.
 

fatcat

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Athlon 3800x2 or 4200x2 are both good choices, If budget allows. I wouldn't bother with sempron. A 4000x2 would also be a good choice for the extra cache if you can find one.
 

enforcer22

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Athlon 3800x2 or 4200x2 are both good choices, If budget allows. I wouldn't bother with sempron. A 4000x2 would also be a good choice for the extra cache if you can find one.

Dont knock the Sempies, they are just as fast as the A64 imo. We play BF2, BF2142, AA, HL, FEAR, COH, etc with no problems whatsoever. The ram you have is more suited for a Sempy too. I get a decent 400mhz OC.
Get whatever you can budget, they will all work well for you.

I have a semperon in a box here and it sux ass. I have all amd cpus from the thunderbird to a 4800x2 and the semperon is by all means a major headache. I have never seen a system so unstable simply because i took out the 3200+ barton and put in a semperon. And i thought they were at that time suppose to be basicly the same chip. stay away from that chip. Course with te gaming you want to do even a semperon would probly be over kill ;) though not to future proof. That video card is a bit over kill as well for a gamer of your sorts.
 

1Tanker

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Apr 28, 2006
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Thanks brothers,

Will go with the x2 4200+. BTW any price reductions expected in the coming weeks? Looking to build during the first or second week of December.
Chances of a price-drop are pretty low. Actually, with inventory's dropping, i'd grab one now, lest any greedy vendors raise prices. GL :)
 

dlmacline

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I think Sempron Manila wont be bad either.. its a pretty decent chip and works fine in games and pretty much everything too..

It wont hang like running Windows XP on a Pentium 2

but given your ATi x1900 video card and your 2 Gig DDR2 memory.. why not complement it with a good processor in the dual core version of Athlon64
 
Just like a Socket 423 Williamette P4 is basically similar in name only to a Socket 775 Cedar Mill P4, a Socket A Sempron is similar in name only to a socket AM2 Sempron. The Socket A Semprons are based on the Athlon K7, are 32 bits, have generally a single channel of DDR 266 or DDR 333 RAM and have the old-style FSB. The AM2 Semprons are based on the K8, all are 64 bits, support dual-channel DDR2-667, most have Cool 'n Quiet. A 1.6 GHz AM2 Sempron is a far different chip than a 1.6 GHz Socket A Sempron in terms of performance and stability.
 

enforcer22

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But are still the low end slower counter part to the better chips as those benchmarks shows. cool & quiet though is something im 0% interested in. I want speed since i game and do alot with my computer. The semperon i have is running ona dual channel pc 400 motherboard atm.

ill go with the other recommendations however for a cpu any of the x2's would be a better cpu in all ways.
 
dual core in Linux rocks awesomely - go with the X2. The 3800+ is a sweet one, I don't expect the 3600+ to be much slower if you use dual channel, good timed RAM even if you only have half the L2 cache.

I also have a 2600+ Sempron on socket 754. OC'ed at 2 GHz, it is actually quite fast, especially in 64-bit (I use Linux mainly).

Go the X2 way if you have 150 bucks to spare - considering your usage, it's the best CPU you can get in the AMD camp.

Note: under Linux, powernowd counteracts any attempt at overclocking the chip - so you'd need to deactivate CnQ and the powernowd daemon if you intend to overclock. At stock though, it screams.
 
you do have a point; however, I find the Sempron64 still a bit lackluster in raw speed - and single core Athlon64 is not much better. X2 is the way to go, but then I'd recommend the difficult to find yet cheaper 3600+ (its reduced L2 cache may also yeld better overclocking results, yum!)

As to the 6300, it's no cheaper than the X2 3800+ (as a matter of fact, it's actually more expensive) - if you look at the X2's AM2 version (it's not priced the same as the s939).
 
The Linux implementation of Cool 'n Quiet processor speed throttling (powernow-k8) does *not* thwart any attempt at overclocking. Overclocking is done in BIOS if you run Linux (and I recommend that it be done this way on any board- OCing from a running OS can have spectacular failures) and on any sane motherboard, the BIOS should disable Cool 'n Quiet when you manually specify CPU speed settings.

Once the computer reboots with Cool 'n Quiet turned off, the powernow-k8 daemon will see that Cool 'n Quiet is turned off in the BIOS and that CPU speed/voltage/multiplier is not at its stock values. Powernow-k8 will then fail to run.

What powernow-k8 *will* do is not let the CPU run at full speed at idle if it is set up in the usual way with the userspace governor. If you want to change that, do the following as root (su - first)

[code:1:e0982eba7f]
cd /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq
echo "performance" > ./scaling_governor
[/code:1:e0982eba7f]

That will now have the CPU run at its top speed all the time, until you restart.
 
strange, as I have done just that. Before the daemon loads, it runs at 2.4 GHz (Idle would be 1.2 GHz). After load, max speed is 2 GHz, idle is 1 GHz.

For what I get, it's due to powernowd reading the CPU's frequency table and implementing those very same tables. It's been doing that for some time, to thwart badly behaved BIOSes. So you may very well have been right with powernowd revisions prior to 0.92, while revision 0.97/98 isn't that easy to deal with.
 
What CPU do you have again? The only 2.4 GHz top-speed chip with a 1.2 GHz idle is a socket 939 FX-53. All of the other 2.4 GHz chips have a idle speed of 1.0 GHz (3400+ or 3700+ on 754, 3800+ or 4000+ on 939 or AM2) or no Cool 'n Quiet at all (FX-53 on Socket 940.) Only the socket 939 FXs (53, 55, 57) have a 1.2 GHz idle speed. A few socket 754 chips have an idle speed of 800 MHz, but the vast majority have an idle speed of 1.0 GHz.

If you really want to see what your chip would do without powernow-k8 running, compile your kernel and put in AMD PowerNow! frequency scaling in as a module (that would be a <M> not a <*> in the menuconfig dialog.) Allow your computer to boot up, and since powernow-k8 is not compiled in, it should not load. Do an "lsmod" to see if it did in fact load. If it did not load, then check your CPU speed. If it did load, rmmod it and then check CPU speed. Now modroble powernow_k8 and start cpufrequtils and see how your CPU responds. That should tell you how powernow-k8 affects your box.
 
a X2 3800+; base clock: 2 GHz, idle: 1 GHz, using a x5/x10 multiplier on a 200 MHz HT bus (you can't call it a FSB, after all).

Now, put that frequency at 240: this makes max clock 2.4 GHz (240x10), and idle clock 1.2 GHz (240x5).

Still, the CPU claims its acceptable clock speeds as being 1 GHz and 2 GHz (with a few steps in-between); well, powernowd will hold it at that.

To the extent that when I boot with powernowd disabled, I get 2.4 GHz in Gnome's process manager, and as soon as I load powernowd it drops to 1 GHz with 2 GHz being the max on load (and benches concur).

Reversing this behaviour requires hand-editing a custom frequency/voltage table in powernowd's source, recompile it then use it.
 
Ah ha. Now I understand. The rule of thumb with overclocking K8s is to ALWAYS turn off Cool 'n Quiet when you overclock as changing the LDT speed (the LDT is actually the base clock on a K8, not the HT bus) multiplier, and voltages away from stock will mess up the frequency/voltage tables and can lead to weird behavior. You might be stable at 240x10 with whatever Vcore you are running, but at 240x9 at 1.30 V and 240x5 at 1.10 V, you might not be. Most boards will automatically disable CnQ when you change the CPU settings off of "Default" and I suggest that you do too.

And yes, if you did figure out a stable overclock and appropriate Vcore at 240x10, 240x9, and then 240x5, then you could map those P-states and their hex codes to your empirically-determined Vcore and then have cpufreqd/powernow read them and have CnQ run your custom speeds.
 
Actually, I knew that rule; still, I enjoy coolness and quietness (this feature's name is appropriate) so I rather like being able to use a system running at low speed for most apps resulting in lower fan speed and less heat, and able to squeeze the throttle when I need horsepower - so I reverted the overclock (I don't need yet more than standard power, I'm just glad to know that I have an easy 20% system boost at my finger tip if I need it).

If I really feel like editing my own frequency table, I'll try to see if I can run my chip at high frequencies with lower voltages (say, turning my X2-3800+ 90W into a X2-4400+ 65W with a text editor is nothing to sneeze at).

That would make a nice living-room PC.