[shaegared]

why bother adding SSE2 to socket A semprons!

Old celerons: socket 478, based off northwood P4 i believe; new celeron (notice it's marketed as celeron d) is based off prescott P4. note it has a different socket also. Totally different beast. As for sempron, the socket A semprons are based directly off the athlon xp. to add SSE2+ support to that would be costly, you'd have to re-engineer that beast. no point in doing that, since socket A sempron is just a stopgap solution. socket a = dead on AMD's roadmaps. Even socket 754 is going to die on AMD's roadmaps (relatively) soon. that's why. a piece of silicon isn't easy to make, so adding SSE2 isn't easy by any means. the sempron line (socket a versions) aren't really bought by consumers directly anymore; mostly OEMs buy 'em. and that makes good business sense. even so, OEMs don't really purchase a lot of them compared to Celeron D, thanks to Intel's superior marketing, so killing off sempron (socket A) would make sense if AMD can replace it with Sempron (socket 754) and at similar pricing... not to mention 64-bit enabled Semprons are out, to counter against Intel's 64-bit enabled Celeron D (hah EM64T bleh).

 

[shaegared]

well, i don't know your budget and what stores are in your area, and i don't know if you want to swap CPUs in the future, but if you do want to swap CPUs in the future, socket 754 is going to die real soon (look at AMD's roadmaps). socket 939 isn't much more expensive (check anandtech RTPE http://labs.anandtech.com/) along with other online stores, if you plan to buy online, otherwise you can just use RTPE to get an idea of how much stores online are selling CPUs and other parts for so you know if you're paying a good price or not)... also athlon 3000+ is relatively old. there are two versions, based on the hammer core (i believe that's the original? can someone verify that) and a slightly later version based on the newcastle core. replying to your previous post, to add SSE2 support to an Athlon XP or derivative (sempron socket A) would be EXTREMELY costly. AMD could not turn a profit on those chips because it costs lots of R&D $, so to make a profit would mean they would have to pass on the cost of R&D onto the consumer (that's you), which would probably mean it would be cheaper (and higher performance too!) to get a socket 754, 939, or 940 solution, if you're going AMD that is.