A Word On Cache:
Essentially, the Sempron is an Athlon XP with half the cache, which runs at lower temperatures and higher clock frequencies. The Sempron takes the place of the AMD Duron, but features twice as much cache as the Durons did. As past discussions have explained, not all processors benefit the same way from increased cache. An additional 128k of cache for the Sempron will affect benchmarks differently than would adding 128k of cache on the Celeron 2.8 or 2.6 "D." The difference is because of the way the to processors handle the cache.

Intel uses a more conventional L1/L2 cache architecture known as an inclusive architecture. Inclusive caching means that the contents of the L1 cache are also included in the L2 cache. The affect is that the L2 cache may contain redundant data that the CPU will not need. This means the CPU has less cache to store data in. As far as the rest of the system and components are concerned, inclusive caching does not provide additional benefit.

On the flip side are the Athlon XP and Sempron processors, which use the exclusive caching principle. With exclusive cache, the contents of the L1 are not present in the L2 cache. The exclusive principle works well for AMD due to the added cost of duplicating 128k in L2 as compared to Intel's 8KB L1 cache.