Battle 3: Celeron D vs. Sempron
AMD just recently introduced their new low-end branded CPU: Sempron, and as we've already seen it does a wonderful job of outperforming Intel's Celeron D, however the margin of improvement is far less than what we're used to seeing thanks to a much improved Celeron D. How does the Sempron fare under Doom 3? Let's find out:
Remember that there are two flavors of Sempron, a K7 and a K8 version. The K7 version performs just like an Athlon XP since it's basically a Thoroughbred core with its 256KB L2 cache. The biggest performance limiter to the K7 based Sempron 2800+ is that it has no on-die memory controller, bringing its performance down pretty far.
But the K8 based Sempron 3100+ does some serious damage, outperforming the Celeron D 335 by an incredible 53%. For a budget Doom 3 system, you will want to steer far away from a Celeron D and towards the Sempron. As we've seen before, the cache size dependency of Doom 3 on the Pentium 4 is significant and even though the Celeron D and the Sempron both only have a 256KB L2 cache, the Sempron's on-die memory controller helps reduce the impact of such a small cache on Doom 3 performance.
The winner here is Sempron.
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michael2k - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Heh, what about frames/$ graphs?Da3dalus - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Lovely graphs, *pats my Athlon 64 3200+ while waiting for Doom 3*Another week for Doom 3 to hit our european shelves, damnit I hate waiting for something you americans already have :-/
elfy6x - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
I have a dual Opteron 246 setup, with 1Gb of ram, and a Radeon 9700 Pro. I'm not really a gamer, but I gave Doom 3 a shot, and it utilizes both of my CPU's when I play. I have nothing else running when I play the game. It doesn't tax both CPU's to 100% but one CPU fluctuates between 40-50% while the other one bounces around 10-20%. So something is processing two threads. Just my observation. :)PotatoMAN - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
I second the idea of benching memory and video memory at AT for doom week. I have a 3200+ A64 and I am wondering if I am starving it more with a 9800 pro (128) or with my 512mb of RAM. Thanks AT for being awesome!Gooberslot - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
I bet a 1-1.2ghz P3 or Athlon would cut it for a minimum. Just go back and look at the old benchmarks of the P4 1.5ghz on here. Only in Quake3 was the P4 on top. In UT the P4 actually tied with the P3 1ghz. Pathetic. Stating minimum requirements based on those old Williamete P4's is very misleading. Perhaps the real minimum cpu requirements should have been 1.2ghz P3 or Athlon, 1.5ghz P4, or 2.4ghz Celeron. :)matman326 - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Man I always knew that an athlon 64 system was powerfull but a 180 dollar proc. beating Intels Extremly Expensive 1000 dollar proc is just mind blowing. So much for the Netburst design kicking butt.AtaStrumf - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
If you could find some time, I'd like to see a comparison between 128 and 256 MB R9800Pro, and 512 RAM and 1024 MB RAM. Basicly how much of a difference do video and system RAM make.at80eighty - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
dammit! looks like im gonna celebrate Christmas with a loan..grrrr... : )WooDaddy - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Two words:AMD ROX!!!
I've been an AMD user since the 386 days and even had a NexGen processor (pre-pentium, K5). Never went Intel, never will (maybe)...
Thatsright,
Naw.. The charts don't lie. But to be fair, let's wait for the Intel-funded people (aka Tom's (blow)hardware) to put up their benchmarks. 10 bucks says they'll make all kinds of excuses to why Intel procs aren't fast enough.
Regs - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Wow. Good info. Dual channel offers nothing. And the socket 939 2.2 Ghz CPU offers nothing over my 3000 A64 which costs 200 dollars less. Given that if you play on higher resolutions.