Athlon X4 730 vs Pentium B960

Place in performance ranking	2745	2142
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Market segment	Laptop	Desktop processor
Series	Intel Pentium	no data
Architecture codename	Sandy Bridge (2011−2013)	Trinity (2012−2013)
Release date	3 October 2011 (12 years ago)	2 October 2012 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$134	no data

Detailed specifications

Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730 basic parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters indirectly say of CPU speed, though for more precise assessment you have to consider their test results.

Physical cores	2 (Dual-core)	4 (Quad-Core)
Threads	2	4
Base clock speed	2.2 GHz	2.8 GHz
Boost clock speed	2.2 GHz	3.2 GHz
Bus type	DMI 2.0	no data
Bus rate	4 × 5 GT/s	no data
Multiplier	22	no data
L1 cache	128 KB	192K
L2 cache	512 KB	4 MB (shared)
L3 cache	2 MB	no data
Chip lithography	32 nm	32 nm
Die size	131 mm²	246 mm²
Maximum core temperature	85 °C	no data
Maximum case temperature (TCase)	no data	74 °C
Number of transistors	504 Million	1,303 million
64 bit support	+	+
Windows 11 compatibility	-	no data

Compatibility

Information on Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730 compatibility with other computer components: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration	1 (Uniprocessor)	1
Socket	FCPGA988,PGA988	FM2
Power consumption (TDP)	35 Watt	65 Watt

Technologies and extensions

Technological solutions and additional instructions supported by Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensions	Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2	no data
AES-NI	-	+
FMA	+	+
AVX	-	+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)	+	no data
My WiFi	-	no data
Turbo Boost Technology	-	no data
Hyper-Threading Technology	-	no data
Idle States	+	no data
Thermal Monitoring	+	-
Flex Memory Access	+	no data
Demand Based Switching	-	no data
FDI	+	no data
Fast Memory Access	+	no data
Status	Discontinued	no data

Security technologies

Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730 technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT	-	no data
EDB	+	no data
Anti-Theft	-	no data

Virtualization technologies

Virtual machine speed-up technologies supported by Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730 are enumerated here.

AMD-V	-	+
VT-d	-	no data
VT-x	-	no data

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel quantity of RAM supported by Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequencies may be supported.

Supported memory types	DDR3	DDR3-1866
Maximum memory size	16 GB	no data
Max memory channels	2	no data
Maximum memory bandwidth	21.335 GB/s	no data

Graphics specifications

General parameters of integrated GPUs, if any.

Integrated graphics card	Intel® HD Graphics for 2nd Generation Intel® Processors	no data
Graphics max frequency	1.1 GHz	no data

Graphics interfaces

Available interfaces and connections of Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730 integrated GPUs.

Number of displays supported	2	no data
eDP	+	no data
DisplayPort	+	-
HDMI	+	-
SDVO	+	no data
CRT	+	no data

Peripherals

Specifications and connection of peripherals supported by Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730.

PCIe version	2.0	2.0
PCI Express lanes	16	no data

Synthetic benchmark performance

Various benchmark results of the processors in comparison. Overall score is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.

Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

Pentium B960 0.63

Athlon X4 730 1.47
+133%

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

Pentium B960 975

Athlon X4 730 2278
+134%

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

Pentium B960 323

Athlon X4 730 370
+14.6%

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

Pentium B960 528

Athlon X4 730 1074
+103%

Gaming performance

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	0.63	1.47
Recency	3 October 2011	2 October 2012
Physical cores	2	4
Threads	2	4
Power consumption (TDP)	35 Watt	65 Watt

Pentium B960 has 85.7% lower power consumption.

Athlon X4 730, on the other hand, has a 133.3% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 11 months, and 100% more physical cores and 100% more threads.

The Athlon X4 730 is our recommended choice as it beats the Pentium B960 in performance tests.

Be aware that Pentium B960 is a notebook processor while Athlon X4 730 is a desktop one.

Should you still have questions on choice between Pentium B960 and Athlon X4 730, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.