Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has launched a new line of its budget-end microprocessors, code-named Sempron.

The new processors from AMD are replacements for the chip maker’s Duron line, which will now be discontinued. The new Sempron chips will compete directly against Intel’s Celeron line of microprocessors.

AMD’s partners – HP, Acer, and Sharp – will ship their desktop computers with the new processors around Christmas season this year.

The new processors are based on 130nm manufacturing process, 256KB L2 cache, and 128KB L1 cache. There will be two versions of the Sempron line – AMD64 Socket 754 (based on the K8 architecture), but without the 64-bit instructions enabled and a normal Socket A (462) version (based on the K7 architecture).

The model numbers and prices of the Sempron chips are as follows:

*Please note that the prices listed are per 1000 units, however, AMD reports the prices to be close to the actual retail prices.

AnandTech, a popular and well respected technical publication, has published their analysis of AMD’s new product line. From the analysis, the less cache on the Sempron processors does not have as much of an impact as one might think. The performance numbers also indicate that the Sempron processors are significantly better than Intel’s Celeron line.

"Sempron, at a glance, surpasses its goal to be a powerful budget processor. We have long awaited the arrival of a budget chip based on the K8 architecture, and now we have one that nearly matches the performance of similarly clocked Athlon 64 chips. What’s the bottom line? If you don’t want x86-64, but you want the performance and motherboard selection of a K8, the Sempron 3100+ is a very nice choice", said Derek Wilson, Senior CPU and Graphics Editor, AnandTech.