If Intel rules in the high-end market, AMD has proven to be a very respectful competitor in the low-end market.

Even with lower operating frequency, Sempron 3000+ performed well and was much superior to the Intel processor in almost all the tests.

In the benchmarking with Office apps the AMD CPU was in average 26% faster than the Intel CPU. Therefore it’s the best choice if you’re going to use the PC for Internet, texts, spreadsheets and office work.

If you use Photoshop, the AMD processor is also the best choice. It accomplished the 12 benchmarking tasks in 11.9 seconds less than the Intel processor.

In games AMD advantage was even bigger. Sempron 3000+ was up to 73% faster on Doom 3, using the same video card.

Besides being faster, the AMD processor consumes less power, heats less, makes less noise (since its fan is less demanded) and doesn’t demand special cases or power supplies.

So, for the moment, the best solution for low cost PCs is AMD, until Intel launches a low cost processor based on its new Core architecture.