Athlon 300U vs Pentium B970

Place in performance ranking	2682	1724
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Market segment	Laptop	Laptop
Series	Intel Pentium	AMD Athlon
Architecture codename	Sandy Bridge (2011−2013)	Zen (2017−2020)
Release date	16 January 2012 (12 years ago)	6 January 2019 (5 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$125	no data

Detailed specifications

Pentium B970 and Athlon 300U 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)	2 (Dual-core)
Threads	2	4
Base clock speed	2.3 GHz	2.4 GHz
Boost clock speed	2.3 GHz	3.3 GHz
Bus type	DMI 2.0	PCIe 3.0
Bus rate	4 × 5 GT/s	no data
Multiplier	23	24
L1 cache	128 KB	192 KB
L2 cache	512 KB	1 MB
L3 cache	2 MB	4 MB
Chip lithography	32 nm	14 nm
Die size	131 mm²	209.78 mm²
Maximum core temperature	85 °C	no data
Number of transistors	504 Million	4940 Million
64 bit support	+	+
Windows 11 compatibility	-	+

Compatibility

Information on Pentium B970 and Athlon 300U 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 (Uniprocessor)
Socket	FCPGA988	AM4
Power consumption (TDP)	35 Watt	15 Watt

Technologies and extensions

Technological solutions and additional instructions supported by Pentium B970 and Athlon 300U. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensions	Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2	XFR, FMA3, SSE 4.2, AVX2, SMT
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 B970 and Athlon 300U 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 B970 and Athlon 300U are enumerated here.

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

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel quantity of RAM supported by Pentium B970 and Athlon 300U. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequencies may be supported.

Supported memory types	DDR3	DDR4 Dual-channel
Maximum memory size	16 GB	64 GB
Max memory channels	2	2
Maximum memory bandwidth	21.335 GB/s	38.397 GB/s
ECC memory support	-	+

Graphics specifications

General parameters of integrated GPUs, if any.

Integrated graphics card	Intel® HD Graphics for 2nd Generation Intel® Processors	AMD Radeon RX Vega 3
Graphics max frequency	1.15 GHz	no data

Graphics interfaces

Available interfaces and connections of Pentium B970 and Athlon 300U 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 B970 and Athlon 300U.

PCIe version	2.0	3.0
PCI Express lanes	16	12

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 B970 0.71

Athlon 300U 2.54
+258%

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 B970 1088

Athlon 300U 3923
+261%

Cinebench 10 32-bit single-core

Cinebench R10 is an ancient ray tracing benchmark for processors by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. Its single core version uses just one CPU thread to render a futuristic looking motorcycle.

Pentium B970 2954

Athlon 300U 3968
+34.3%

Cinebench 10 32-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 10 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R10 using all the processor threads. Possible number of threads is limited by 16 in this version.

Pentium B970 5697

Athlon 300U 8724
+53.1%

wPrime 32

wPrime 32M is a math multi-thread processor test, which calculates square roots of first 32 million integer numbers. Its result is measured in seconds, so that the less is benchmark result, the faster the processor.

Pentium B970 35.77

Athlon 300U 15.44
+132%

Gaming performance

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	0.71	2.54
Recency	16 January 2012	6 January 2019
Threads	2	4
Chip lithography	32 nm	14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	35 Watt	15 Watt

Athlon 300U has a 257.7% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 6 years, 100% more threads, a 128.6% more advanced lithography process, and 133.3% lower power consumption.

The Athlon 300U is our recommended choice as it beats the Pentium B970 in performance tests.

Should you still have questions on choice between Pentium B970 and Athlon 300U, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.