Despite the processor industry being driven for so long by the now dispelled 'Megahertz Myth', AMD's budget conscious 1.833GHz Sempron 2600+ CPU put in an very good showing.
The 2600+ proved itself as a very capable all-rounder, outperforming the higher clocked Celeron 2.4 and 2.6GHz products. This chip would be as happy at home in a multimedia workhorse as it would in a gaming machine. A margin of 3000 raw 3DMarks separated it from its low cost competition in 1024x768 hardware portion of our DirectX 8.0 testing, although this gap shrank to put Intel within 26 marks in the DX9.0 heavy 3DMark03. Real world game tests saw the 2600+ opened the gap once more on the Intel offering, with almost half the amount of time taken to run the test.
As socket A's will reach the end of life fairly soon, you may not be able to grab these for much longer. But if you are after one, AMD's 754 packaged Semprons (3100+ and above) will feature the SSE2 optimisations lacking in the existing socket A product range. At the end of the day this CPU does offers a lot of performance for your money. It would also be a great upgrade or second PC option for those on a budget.