It was bound to happen eventually. Someone out there was eventually going to come up with a review that looked at the real differences between the AMD Athlon 64 and the Sempron processors. One thing that was said in this review that I felt was completely wrong was as follows. They are making the claim that even for a budget gamer; after spending $300 on needs parts, that extra $50 is worth hanging onto when choosing a processor. Are they nuts!

The key players in the processor industry being Intel and AMD, both offer cut down versions of their flagship products. For example the cut down version of the Intel Pentium4 processor is known as the Celeron. Currently the AMD equivalent is known as the Sempron and this processor is available in two different forms. The Sempron has been released for both the Socket A and 754-pin platforms. Often readers ask if they should purchase a 754-pin Athlon64 or Sempron and is the $50 US price premium worth it for the Athlon64 processor.

Normally, I would say fork out the extra $50 for the more powerful processor, though this advice is based on Pentium 4/Celeron performance. The Celeron is not even half the processor that the Pentium 4 is, in my opinion. However, on paper the Sempron looks far more promising than the Celeron, offering a much larger L1 Cache a better L2 Cache, more bandwidth and a lower operating temperature. However, neither the Sempron or Celeron are 64-bit enabled processors. Nevertheless, the question still remains, is the Sempron worth saving $50 on? After all you will be using the same motherboard, memory and graphics card as you would with the Athlon64.

Even a budget gaming system is going to cost a pretty penny after purchasing a graphics card for $200 US, memory for $100 US a motherboard for $100 US and then the processor. When spending this kind of money a $50 US saving is quite substantial. However, the question is will the user pay more in the long run for saving $50 US by purchasing the Sempron 3100+ over the Athlon64 3200+ for example? This article has been dedicated to answer this commonly asked question by pitching these two processors against one another.