The new budget Sempron chip from AMD is slower than the 32-bit Athlon XP it replaces, according to tests from PC World. In the tests, a machine with the new chip underperformed one with a comparable Athlon XP. With the Athlon XP, the machine landed a WorldBench 5 score of 82, about 5 percent faster than the 78 score it achieved with the Sempron. AutoCAD and games tests performed also yielded similar results. However, the Sempron based system did beat a similarly configured PC with Intel's Celeron D value CPU.

Sempron underperformance? I disagree

The XP 2800+ has a clock speed 4% quicker than the Sempron so if you take the PC World scores and mulitply by this percentage difference then you get pretty much the same speed.

I'm surprised this wasn't taken in to account, especially when you factor in the cost of the chip.

Sempron Performance

I also disagree but for a different reason. Isn't the Sempron line of processors the DURON replacement?

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040728/sempron-01.html

If so, you would not expect the Sempron to outperform the Athlon XP.

The Sempron chip is the XP replacement and does under perform it. However the FSB of the chip is quite high and this does make up... slightly. Although the XP chip is faster