Overclocking

We could overclock this CPU up to 225 MHz (2.25 GHz internally), a 12.5% increase over the default configuration of 200 MHz (2 GHz internally). That’s a great result for an AMD processor.

We didn’t play with memory nor voltage configurations, so you may be able to achieve even better results.

Conclusions

We were really impressed by this new CPU from AMD. Although it is theoretically targeted to entry-level market, in our opinion Sempron 3400+ is a mid-range CPU, which will please all users, especially gamers that want a high-performance system with an affordable price.

It was faster than Athlon XP 3200+ – the fastest CPU for the socket 462 platform and which was a high-end processor once – in almost all benchmarks, really great news.

Since this model already has the 64-bit instructions, which once was available only on Athlon 64, it is perfect for the user that doesn’t want (or can’t afford) to buy an Athlon 64.

Actually, as we mentioned, Sempron 3400+ is an Athlon 64 3200+ with less memory cache.

We also need to mention the terrific job AMD has being doing by integrating the memory controller inside the CPU. Sempron 3400+ is capable of using almost all memory bandwidth available, which doesn’t happen on Intel CPUs or AMD CPUs targeted to the socket 462 platform.

Our only constructive critic goes to AMD’s numbering system. Labeled as 3400+, you could think that this CPU is comparable to Athlon 64 3400+ or even to a Pentium 4 3.4 GHz, which is not the case – even though in some benchmarks the performance difference between the afore mentioned processors wasn’t so big. Anyway, this numbering system serves only for comparison between processors within the same family. However, if you think on Athlon XP, it makes sense, since Sempron 3400+ is really faster than Athlon XP 3200+.