AMD AM2 Sempron vs. Athlon - Confused

AMD AM2 Sempron vs. Athlon - Confused

[Marc Perkel]

I'm confused and I thought if anyone would know it would be people here.

So - in the AM2 world, what's the difference between Sempron and Athlon 
processors? I look at the specs and they look really similar. Pricing is 
even weirder with lower spec Semprons costing more than higher spec Athlons?

And - can Linux kernels run on these new processors and motherboards or 
is this just too new to mess with?

Re: AMD AM2 Sempron vs. Athlon - Confused

[Alistair John Strachan]

On Thursday 29 June 2006 18:30, Marc Perkel wrote:
> I'm confused and I thought if anyone would know it would be people here.
>
> So - in the AM2 world, what's the difference between Sempron and Athlon
> processors?

That I'm aware of, Semprons have smaller L2 caches. You want an Athlon.

> I look at the specs and they look really similar. Pricing is 
> even weirder with lower spec Semprons costing more than higher spec
> Athlons?

I've not seen this, but my understanding is that AMD's PR numbering scheme 
can't be used to compare between processor lines. i.e., a Sempron 3000+ is 
not faster than an Athlon 2800+..

> And - can Linux kernels run on these new processors and motherboards or
> is this just too new to mess with?

Should just work. I've seen Linux booted on an AM2 board, but I don't 
currently own one.

-- 
Cheers,
Alistair.

Final year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.

Re: AMD AM2 Sempron vs. Athlon - Confused

[Krzysztof Halasa]

Marc Perkel <marc@perkel.com> writes:

> And - can Linux kernels run on these new processors and motherboards
> or is this just too new to mess with?

I have an MSI K9N Ultra 2F mobo here and it does work fine - not
counting some kernel warnings such as:

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20060127
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
Error attaching device data
Error attaching device data
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)

PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0b.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[0374:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:0b.0:pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0c.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[0374:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:0c.0:pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0d.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[0378:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:0d.0:pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0e.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[0375:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:0e.0:pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0f.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[0377:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
(apparently about PCI bridges).


Main differences betweem AM2 vs. S939 are that you have to use DDR2 RAM,
and AM2s are usually less power hungry (thus cooler).
-- 
Krzysztof Halasa