Low-cost CPU Duel: Sempron 2650 vs. Celeron J1800 Review

Conclusions

Nowadays, the desktop computer market has specific products for specific needs. And a very large share of the market requires computers where value is more important than performance. May be a grandson buying a computer for his grandma to browse the web, or a company buying dozens of desktops for simple tasks such as data typing, or a store installing price-consulting terminals. Those (among several other) applications need a cheap computer, and if it has a low power consuption, small footprint, and low noise level, it is even better.

As expected, the two biggest desktop CPU manufacturers have products for this market segment. AMD offers the AM1 platform, with Athlon and Sempron processors, while Intel presents the Bay Trail-D family with Celeron J and Pentium J models. Most of the chips from both families are quad-core CPUs, but we chose two of the most inexpensive models, with only two cores each.

The AMD platform has the advantage of being socketed: you can buy the motherboard from a vendor, and the processor from another one. If you want more performance in the future, you just need to replace the chip. The Intel solution, on the other hand, is soldered to the motherboard, which means if you want to upgrade your system, you have to replace the motherboard.

Our tests showed that, between the Sempron 2650 and the Celeron J1800, the Intel solution is faster, and it is probably due to its higher clock rate and dual-channel memory access. Additionally, the model from Intel has a lower TDP (10 W against 25 W of the Sempron 2650), and goes well with a passive refrigeration solution (meaning less noise), which is a good thing to have on this market segment. The Celeron J1800 was faster in all the tests we performed, except in the 3DMark tests.

In addition, a solution based on the Celeron J1800 is a little bit cheaper than a Sempron 2650 solution, since a motherboard with a soldered J1800 costs about USD 60, while if you buy a Sempron 2650 CPU (which costs about USD 40), you will also have to buy a motherboard (which costs today USD 31 or more).

Another important conclusion from our benchmarks is that the integrated video engine of both CPUs are not powerful enough to run a recent game, even at the lowest possible settings. Using a discrete video card with those platforms does not make sense, since the CPU will be a bottleneck. So, it is better to choose a CPU from another family if you are planning to build an inexpensive computer for casual gaming.