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CPU Core Details

CPU Codename Prescott-256 Thoroughbred (Model 8)
MoBo Socket Socket 478/Socket N Socket 462/Socket A
Notebook CPU no no
Release Date 22 Sep 2004 28 Jul 2004
CPU Link GD Link GD Link
Approved

CPU Technical Specifications

{
CPU Cores 1 1
Clock Speed 3.06 GHz 1.75 GHz
Turbo Frequency - -
System Bus 533 MHz -
Max TDP 73 W 62 W
Lithography 90 nm 130 nm
Bit Width 32 Bit -
Voltage Range 1.250V-1.400V KB -
Max Temperature 67°C -
Virtualization Technology no no

CPU Cache and Memory

L1 Cache Size - 128 KB
L2 Cache Size 256 KB 256 KB
L2 Cache Speed - -
L3 Cache Size - -
Memory Types
ECC Memory Support no no

CPU Graphics

Integrated Graphics no no

CPU Mini Review

Mini Review Prescott-256 Celeron D processors, initially launched 25 June 2004, featuring double the L1 cache (16 KB) and L2 cache (256 KB) as compared to the previous Willamette and Northwood desktop Celerons, by virtue of being based on the Prescott Pentium 4 core. It also features a 533 MT/s bus and SSE3, and a 3xx model number (compared to 5xx for Pentium 4s and 7xx for Pentium Ms). The Prescott-256 Celeron D was manufactured for Socket 478 and LGA 775, with 3x0 and 3x5 designations from 310 through to 355 at clock speeds of 2.13 GHz to 3.33 GHz. Sempron has been the marketing name used by AMD for several different budget desktop CPUs, using several different technologies and CPU socket formats. The Sempron replaced the AMD Duron processor and competes against Intel's Celeron series of processors. AMD coined the name from the Latin semper, which means always, to suggest the Sempron is suitable for daily use, practical, and part of everyday life.

Gaming Performance Comparison

In terms of overall gaming performance, the AMD Sempron 2500+ is marginally better than the Intel Celeron D 345 when it comes to running the latest games. This also means it will be less likely to bottleneck more powerful GPUs, allowing them to achieve more of their gaming performance potential.

Both the Celeron D 345 and the Sempron 2500+ were released at the same time, so are likely to be quite similar.

Both CPUs exhibit very poor performance, so rather than upgrading from one to the other you should consider looking at more powerful CPUs. Neither of these will be able to run the latest games in any playable way.

{ The Celeron D 345 and the Sempron 2500+ both have 1 cores, and so are quite likely to struggle with the latest games, or at least bottleneck high-end graphics cards when running them. With a decent accompanying GPU, theCeleron D 345 and the Sempron 2500+ may still be able to run slightly older games fairly effectively.

More important for gaming than the number of cores and threads is the clock rate. Problematically, unless the two CPUs are from the same family, this can only serve as a general guide and nothing like an exact comparison, because the clock cycles per instruction (CPI) will vary so much.

The Celeron D 345 and Sempron 2500+ are not from the same family of CPUs, so their clock speeds are by no means directly comparable. Bear in mind, then, that while the Celeron D 345 has a 1.31 GHz faster frequency, this is not always an indicator that it will be superior in performance, despite frequency being crucial when trying to avoid GPU bottlenecking. In this case, however, the difference is probably a good indicator that the is superior.

Aside from the clock rate, the next-most important CPU features for PC game performance are L2 and L3 cache size. Faster than RAM, the more cache available, the more data that can be stored for lightning-fast retrieval. L1 Cache is not usually an issue anymore for gaming, with most high-end CPUs eking out about the same L1 performance, and L2 is more important than L3 - but L3 is still important if you want to reach the highest levels of performance. Bear in mind that although it is better to have a larger cache, the larger it is, the higher the latency, so a balance has to be struck.

The Celeron D 345 and the Sempron 2500+ have the same L2 cache size, and neither CPU appears to have an L3 cache. Sadly, there is not enough data to judge based on L1 cache size which CPU would perform better.

The maximum Thermal Design Power is the power in Watts that the CPU will consume in the worst case scenario. The lithography is the semiconductor manufacturing technology being used to create the CPU - the smaller this is, the more transistors that can be fit into the CPU, and the closer the connections. For both the lithography and the TDP, it is the lower the better, because a lower number means a lower amount of power is necessary to run the CPU, and consequently a lower amount of heat is produced.