Sempron or Athlon 64?

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Jmsmcniff

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Im looking at building my first pc soon, ive been looking at various cpu to start off with.

Ive seen the 3400+ 64bit Sempron, and the 3200+ amd 64 venice core.

WHich would be better for me, buying the sempron which is chepper but occupies slot 754 or the athlon 3200+ which uses the more recent 939. Would there be any point in getting the 3200+ just because it uses a more up to date socket? Im not planning on doing gaming, but various encoding and video editing would be essential.

Thanks!
 
the Sempron is basically the same as the Athlon 64, but with less level 2 cache.
however, video encoding is one task which will see a fairly significant benefit from having more L2 cache.
that, and socket 939 is advantageous over socket 754. it allows dual channel memory, and up to 4 DIMM slots.

however, in terms of upgradability, socket 754 will actually be around for longer. It will be used for future budget processors (more Semprons) and socket 939 will be replaced by socket AM2 (which supports DDR2, and in future DDR3)
 
have a sempron 2800 in one of my machines and a athlon 3000 in the other. the sempron performs the same with browsing, music and even serious gaming. but the athlon performs better with video/music editing and rendering and downloads and load times. so it depends on what you are doing. I would say go for the s939 and athlon 3000, because even if you dont upgrade to AM2 then you will still be able to keep that processor for a while.
 
64, even if it's just the 3000+, will be better for the video stuff you're doing than the Sempron and the socket 939 can be upgraded much easier in the future if you choose to do so.
 
go with the s939 athlon. you say video encoding is an essential feature so it would be handy to have a platform you can install a dual core on in the future. on that not perhaps you should consider one of the low end pentium D's if your main use is video encoding as they would outperform any single core in video encoding
 
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