Anyone tried the 64 bit Semprons?

[StarOfAfrica2]

Supposedly a turned down version of the Athlon 64, 90 nm vs 130nm and slightly slower clock speeds.  But handles 64 bit instruction.  Supposed to be AMD's answer to the new 64 bit Celerons.

[Roscoroo]

thats about it ... not shure if its up to par with how the old morgans were in there day ... the 32 bit semprons are pos's as far as im concerned  they could of just kept the barton line of cpu's for the budget pc market .

[StarOfAfrica2]

I did read some reviews at Newegg, and while everyone pretty much bashes on the 32 bit Semprons, almost everyone seems to love the 64 bit ones.  I'm wondering if its because of the onboard memory controller.  I found an article at Toms Hardware on them, but while the title said they were a dissapointment, they ran pretty much what I expected a slightly underclocked Athlon 64 to run when compared to their full clock speed cousins.  In other words, middle of the pack.  They werent at the bottom by any means.  And considering I can get a Sempron 64 2800+ for $76 but the Athlon 64 2800+ is $139, thats a big price difference for me for 1.6ghz to 1.8ghz.

I also noticed the Sempron 64s run at 1.4 volts, while the Athlon 64 runs at 1.5 volts.  I even saw some people saying they upped the voltage and found they performed exactly like their Athlon counterparts.

Main thing I was concerned about was a common problem with BIOS not recognizing the Sempron 64s.  I'm wondering why if they are so similar, what is different enough that the BIOS requires an update to recognize it?

[38ruk]

Ive read this review where they ran the sempron VS a 754 amd 64 , not a bad read.... 38
 http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1841934,00.asp

[StarOfAfrica2]

Cool, thanks for the link!  It tends to reinforce what I already believed re: performance of the Sempron vs the Athlon.  It also reinforced what I've long believed about Celerons too, and for gamers that may be the best part of the article.