Just wondering - Its an Athlon/AMD thing isn't it? Is it quite reasonable? Bit quicker than my current 1.67 and 1.8 AMD machines? I just got one of these, not collected it yet, but this will be my 4th folding machine, well 5th actually, but the 4th one hardwired into my network (thanks for the cable, Richard )

So, is it reasonably quick?

From what I've seen of FAH, it seems that - as long as you have a modern processor and a "reasonable" amount of RAM - your throughput will depend directly on processor speed, regardless of the exact processor type. There may be some variations with different operating systems, but I'd expect them to be negligible for the same "family" of OS (e.g all Windows or all *NIX/Linux).

I think the semperon is to the athlon what the celeron is to the pentium .............as far as I know the cache is smaller than the equivalent athlon/pentium chip

I think the semperon is to the athlon what the celeron is to the pentium .............as far as I know the cache is smaller than the equivalent athlon/pentium chip

yup, its a cut down athlon with smaller memory, slower memory(i think) and slower bus speeds maybe.

I don't think the processor memory and the like will be a part of the "speed" will it, given that it'll do nothing really but fold... Oooh, its got a DVD RW on it though which will be nice, but then the 1.67ghz machine does too.

Makes me wonder if its worth whipping the writer out of the that machine and selling it on ebay...

Yep, Sempron is just a cut price Athlon.

the amount and apeed of the memory does affect the performance as this is where the data the processor works out goes. such a bad bad explanation :(

The processor does work at that speed but the smaller/slower cache causes a log jam so the computer as a whole won't run as fast as a 2600 athlon

Right. Thanks. Even with the slight log jamming. it "should" still be quicker than a 1.67 & 1.8 AMD machine though right? A 2.6 can't be slowed up to that extent by the cache, etc, can it? :confused:

It isn't a 2.6 GHz processor - a bit of creative thinking on the part of the AMD marketing chaps

Yep, Sempron is just a cut price Athlon.

It's exactly the same core as the older thoroughbred Athlon XPs , just rebranded as a budget processor. It's notiably faster than the Durons , but slightly slower than the current Athlon XP of the same number.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2139&p=2

Anyone care to bet how long it'll be before J starts bidding on stuff like this?

A 2600semperon runs at 1.8gig iirc..

I don't think so Steve. Would be nice though.

Actually the Sempron is the replacement for all things Athlon-related for that socket. It's a way for AMD to reduce their cost base.

Durons have been phased out of production, and the other stuff non-A64/Opteron is all going Sempron.

It's not a bad CPU by any means, and it runs pretty cool too.