Battle For The 'Value' Chip Segment

Aiming at the "value segment" of the market, where systems sell for less than $500, AMD has released the Sempron processor family. The lineup consists of seven desktop and five mobile CPUs, ranging in price from $39 for an entry-level chip aimed at the Asian market to $126 for an advanced Socket-754 processor.

AMD's chip is a shot across the bow of Intel, which in June introduced its own value desktop processor in the form of the Celeron D. AMD is hoping Sempron will enable resellers to squeeze a little bit of additional profit out of sub-$500 boxes. However, since the parts are priced only about $5 less than the comparable Celeron D, that may be a tough goal. Nevertheless, white-box vendors will be able to ramp up quickly, thanks to Sempron motherboards on the way from Asus, Biostar, Elitegroup, MSI, Shuttle, Soyo and Tyan, among others.