Fast Computer On The Cheap? The Sempron 3100+ On Overdrive

Socket 754 On Overdrive: A Fast Computer With The Sempron 3100+

AMD has shown time and again that it's usually the platforms given up for dead that end up living the longest. The Socket A architecture, which accommodates the Duron, the Athlon XP, and their successor the "Sempron," remains more than sufficient for office systems. Motherboards with NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset or the VIA KT880 are still fine in terms of technology, though they lack the latest innovations such as DDR2 and PCI Express. But since these don't manage to provide that much real-world performance benefit, this isn't as big a disadvantage as it might appear at first.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.