AMD Sempron 3100+: The best value processor yet
SOMETIMES AMD pulls a lion out of the bag instead of the proverbial cat. The Sempron family could have been seen by most reviewers as a bunch of rebadged Thoroughbred CPUs destined at helping the channel getting rid of the last batch of Athlon XP processors. That's what in a nutshell, most of them are, from the Sempron 2300+ to the last Sempron 2800+. Basically, 333MHz Socket A Athlons with 256KB cache, in some cases. Actually, some online retailers are even rebadging on the fly, Barton Athlon XP processors to Sempron 3200+.
The Sempron 3100+ on the other hand is a brand new product and put some spice in the whole line. It is the first member of the Paris family, itself a derivative of the Newcastle family which include the first Athlon64 2800+. The three main notable differences between the Sempron 3100+ and the rest of the Athlon 64 family concerns the amount of L2 cache, 256KB instead of the usual 512KB or 1MB cache, the fact that it has a single channel DDR memory controller and a single hypertransport Link and the fact that it has no AMD64 capabilities but will include the NX bit and Cool'n'quiet features. The Sempron 3100+ is built using a 130nm SOI process, like most new AMD processors, and it has been positioned against the Intel Celeron family.
