Contrary to socket 754 Sempron processors, which can only work under single channel configurarion, socket AM2 Sempron CPUs can use dual channel config, doubling the memory transfer rate if you use two or four memory modules in your PC. Keep in mind that socket 754 Sempron processors accept only DDR memories, while socket AM2 Sempron processors accept only DDR2 memories.

The main features of Sempron processors based on socket AM2 include:

• 64 KB instruction L1 memory cache and 64 KB data L1 memory cache
• 128 KB or 256 KB L2 memory cache
• HyperTransport bus running at 800 MHz (3.2 GB/s). This clock may also be referred as “1,600 MHz”.
• Memory controller supporting DDR2-400, DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 memories under dual channel configuration, meaning that the CPU accesses the memory 128 bits per time, if two or four memory modules are used.
• SSE3 instruction set.
• 64-bit instructions.
• 90 nm or 65 nm manufacturing process.

Recently AMD started using a new numbering system for their processors. This new system is more complicated than the previous one and will only be adopted by new processors, i.e. processors that were already launched with the old numbering system won’t have their model number replaced, keeping the old naming.

This new numbering system uses a five-character format: XX-####, where XX are letters and #### are numbers. The two letters indicate the processor class, with the second letter indicating the CPU thermal dissipation (TDP). The first number after the dash indicates the processor series and informs the CPU features. The three last numbers indicate the position of the CPU within its series and class. The higher this number, the more features the CPU has – usually indicating a higher performance within its class and series.

On the table below we list all Sempron socket AM2 models released to date. TDP stands for Thermal Design Power and indicates the CPU maximum thermal dissipation, i.e. the CPU cooler must be able to dissipate at least this amount of heat.