Well to start off the Sempron has no 64bit capabilities. It is only based on the Athlon 64 line of chips and does have the onboard memory controller but it will not do the 64bit thing.(you might have known that... you'll be able to upgrade if needed in the future anyways.)
Second. Read this review.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...n-3100-oc.html Quote:
We should note that the Sempron 3100+ processor delivers good performance even without overclocking. Having only 256 kilobytes of L2 cache memory, it is just 1-2% slower than the full-featured Athlon 64 2800+. Of course, the lack of AMD64 technology may disappoint some users, but this technology is not very important today – 64-bit operating systems and applications are not widespread, and the competitor desktop processors hasn’t yet acquired a similar technology yet.
As for the gain you receive by overclocking the Sempron 3100+, we enjoyed a performance growth of about 25% by clocking our sample at 2.52GHz (40% frequency boost). Thanks to that, the overclocked Sempron 3100+ could outperform the Pentium 4 3.4GHz as well as the Athlon 64 3400+ by about 5% in average.
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If you are planning at all on overclocking get the Sempron 3100+. They did those tests with a subpar Heatsink and they still got it to average 5% faster than a P4 3.4Ghz not bad if you ask me.
If you were to do this you would need a mobo with an Nforce3 250GB chipset because of the AGP/PCI bus locks.
Now for my recommedation. Get the OEM version of the Sempron Chip @ Newegg.com for $100. Spend the rest of your budget for a good cooler.
Linear Mode
