Re: Sempron: 64-bit CPU?

[Dan <dan27649@xxxxxxxxx>]

Excellent links, John! Thanks!

It appears that there are two types of Semprons that are socket
754-compatible (which is designed for the 64-bit Athlons), the originals
that have the 64-bit instruction set disabled, and the newer ones (as of
June 2005) that have them enabled. The only ways to know are to see the
labeling on the chip itself, or running a program like CPU-Z.

I had already seen the "AMD 64-bit Power & Thermal guide" you linked; if I
had paid attention to the title and seen that the Sempron was included, that
in itself would have answered a few questions.

All-in-all, I guess I'm not going to worry about the two distinctions at
this point. I figure it'll be a few years before I even think about a 64-bit
OS. Heck, it took me this long just to get to something newer than Win98! It
*is* nice to know, however, that there is an upgrade path for the mb on this
PC. (It *is* limited to 2GB ram, and I can only wonder how long it will take
to see that amount of memory like we look at 128MB today, which is the
maxxed limit on my old Gateway2k.)

- Dan

On 9/28/05, Jones, John (US) <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Top article when googling for "64 bit sempron":
> http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/201 "Actually, these processors
> are in fact Athlon 64 CPUs with less L2 memory cache and with the 64-bit
> instruction set disabled."
>
> And the Sempron is listed in the AMD 64-bit Power & Thermal guide:
> http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/
> 30430.pdf
>
> Plenty of hits in the AMD forums if you refine the above google search
> with "site:amd.com <http://amd.com>".
>
> And in a different site I frequent, here's some recent discussion about
> the 64-bit Semprons:
> http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4883&start=100#73438