Athlon 64 Or Sempron 64

We decided to include benchmark results of three Athlon 64 processors, to compare them to the Sempron 3300+ and 3400+. Both entry-level Athlon 64's for Socket 939 platforms (3000+ and 3200+) cost only a bit more than the Sempron 3400+, but feature a full-fledged 512 kB of cache and the dual channel DDR400 memory interface. The difference in platform costs starts at $15 and goes much higher, depending on the features you insist on.

We also chose to compare the new Sempron to the Socket 754 Athlon 64 3200+, based on the Newcastle core, since it is the Athlon 64 equivalent of the Sempron at the same clock speed. Admittedly, Newcastle is a 130 nm core without the memory controller improvements and without SSE3, but we haven't come across a 90 nm Socket 754 Athlon 64 yet.