AMD Athlon PRO 3045B vs Intel Core i7-930 Comparison

The Intel Core i7-930 and the AMD Athlon PRO 3045B make for one of the more unusual matchups in the database: a 45 nm desktop heavyweight from the Nehalem era against a 15 W, 14 nm Zen-based mobile part. What makes the pairing genuinely interesting is how close the recorded results are. Despite an enormous gap in design philosophy, power envelope, and platform age, the two chips land within roughly a single-digit percentage of each other across every recorded test. That alone invites a closer look at what the data actually says.

FAQ

Q: Which CPU wins the head-to-head benchmark series?

A: The Intel Core i7-930 wins all five recorded tests. It takes Cinebench R15 multi-core with 258 points against 237, Cinebench R20 multi-core with 1076 against 988, Cinebench R20 single-core with 151 against 139, Cinebench R23 multi-core with 2563 against 2354, and Cinebench R23 single-core with 361 against 332. Every win comes in a narrow band between 8.6 and 8.9 percent.

Q: How close are these two chips overall?

A: Very close by the database's aggregate measure. The Core i7-930 carries an average benchmark score of 882 while the Athlon PRO 3045B sits at 872, a gap of just ten points. Both chips occupy the 23rd percentile against all CPUs in the database, meaning they are statistically peers in the broader rankings.

Q: Does either chip have extra benchmark coverage the other lacks?

A: Yes. The Athlon PRO 3045B has two Geekbench entries in the database, scoring 1287 in multi-core and 766 in single-core. The Core i7-930 has no Geekbench results recorded, so all direct comparisons between the two rest on the five shared Cinebench tests.

Q: Which CPU is more power efficient?

A: The recorded thermal design power figures differ dramatically: 130 W for the Core i7-930 versus 15 W for the Athlon PRO 3045B. Given near-parity in benchmark scores, the data implies the Athlon PRO 3045B delivers almost identical performance at a small fraction of the power draw.

Q: Are either of these chips still in production?

A: The Core i7-930 is marked end-of-life in the database. The Athlon PRO 3045B is listed as active, which reflects its much more recent Zen-based design.

Q: Do either support integrated graphics or ECC memory?

A: The Athlon PRO 3045B includes Radeon Vega graphics with 2 compute units and supports ECC memory. The Core i7-930 has no integrated graphics listed and does not support ECC.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The sweep goes five-nil to the Core i7-930, but the margin is what deserves attention. Every single test lands in an 8.6 to 8.9 percent window, an unusually tight cluster that suggests the gap is systematic rather than test-dependent.

In multi-core rendering, the Core i7-930 scores 258 in Cinebench R15 against 237, 1076 in Cinebench R20 against 988, and 2563 in Cinebench R23 against 2354. Each multi-core delta sits at 8.9 percent. On paper the i7-930 has four cores and eight threads against the Athlon's two cores and four threads, so a reader might expect a wider gap in heavily threaded work. The data indicates the modern Zen architecture clawed most of it back through per-thread efficiency.

Single-core results echo the same story. The i7-930 posts 151 versus 139 in Cinebench R20 single-core (8.6 percent) and 361 versus 332 in R23 single-core (8.7 percent). That the single-core margins nearly match the multi-core margins is telling: the older chip's advantage comes from clock behavior and core resources per thread, not from thread-count leverage. If threading were the deciding factor, the multi-core deltas would stretch well beyond the single-core ones, and they do not.

The Geekbench results, recorded only for the Athlon PRO 3045B, cannot be compared directly here, but they confirm the chip's standing in its own lane: its nearest rivals include the Intel Atom C5315 (average score 871, 0.1 percent away), the Core i3-5157U (877, -0.5 percent), the Core i7-3540M (867, 0.6 percent), and the Xeon X3460 (866, 0.6 percent). That is a tightly packed neighborhood of mobile and older desktop parts. The i7-930's own rivals are similarly close: the Athlon Silver 7120U, Phenom II X6 1035T, and Core i3-1000NG4 all average 881, a mere 0.1 percent away, with the PRO A12-8870E at 880, 0.2 percent behind.

Where Each One Wins

Strictly on the recorded benchmarks, the Core i7-930 wins everywhere: multi-core, single-core, old test versions, new test versions. There is no workload in the shared data where the Athlon PRO 3045B comes out ahead.

But the win column hides the context. The i7-930's wins come at a 130 W thermal design power versus 15 W for the Athlon. For a desktop scenario where power draw is irrelevant and a capable cooler is assumed, the i7-930's five-point sweep is the whole story. For anything power-constrained, the Athlon PRO 3045B achieves within about nine percent of the same performance at a fraction of the thermal budget, which reframes its five losses as arguably the more impressive engineering result.

Beyond raw compute, the Athlon PRO 3045B wins categories the i7-930 simply cannot contest: it has integrated Radeon Vega graphics (2 compute units) where the i7-930 has none listed, and it supports ECC memory where the i7-930 does not. Those are functional wins rather than benchmark wins, but they matter for certain deployments.

Specification Differences

The two chips differ on nearly every axis:

• Cores and threads: 4 cores / 8 threads on the i7-930 versus 2 cores / 4 threads on the Athlon PRO 3045B.
• Clocks: the i7-930 runs a 2.80 base and 3.07 boost; the Athlon runs a 2.30 base with a higher 3.20 boost.
• TDP: 130 W versus 15 W.
• Socket and platform: Intel Socket 1366, DDR3, triple-channel memory, PCIe Gen 2 on the i7-930; AMD Socket FP5, DDR4, dual-channel memory with 38.4 GB/s recorded bandwidth, PCIe Gen 3 with 12 CPU lanes on the Athlon.
• Graphics and ECC: the Athlon has integrated Vega graphics and ECC support; the i7-930 has neither.
• Segment and status: desktop, end-of-life for the i7-930; mobile, active for the Athlon PRO 3045B.
• Cache: the i7-930 carries 64 KB L1 and 256 KB L2 per core with 8 MB shared L3; the Athlon has larger per-core L1 (96 KB) and L2 (512 KB) but only 4 MB shared L3.

Architecture Differences

These are fundamentally different designs. The Core i7-930 is a Bloomfield implementation of Intel's Nehalem architecture, built on a 45 nm Intel process, packing 731 million transistors into a 263 mm² die. The Athlon PRO 3045B is a Dali-codenamed part of the 3000 series built on AMD's Zen architecture, manufactured by GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm node, with 3,500 million transistors in a 148 mm² die.

The transistor counts point to an interesting inversion: the much newer, much smaller die actually holds far more transistors, reflecting the level of integration Zen brings, including the on-die Radeon Vega graphics. The i7-930's larger die on a far older node delivers more cores and a bigger L3 pool, while the Athlon compensates with a denser process, higher boost clock, larger per-core caches, and newer I/O in the form of DDR4 and PCIe Gen 3.

Memory subsystems diverge sharply. The i7-930's triple-channel DDR3 controller was a workstation-class feature of its era, though no bandwidth figure is recorded in the database. The Athlon's dual-channel DDR4 setup carries a recorded 38.4 GB/s of bandwidth and adds ECC support, aligning with its PRO branding and commercial positioning.

The Verdict

On pure benchmark results, the Core i7-930 is the winner of this matchup: five tests, five wins, margins of 8.6 to 8.9 percent. Both chips sit in the 23rd percentile of the database, and their average scores of 882 and 872 sit closer to each other than either sits to most rivals, so the practical performance difference is real but modest.

The data points to different buyers. For a desktop platform where the i7-930's Socket 1366 board, DDR3 memory, and substantial cooling are already in place, it is the faster recorded chip, and its extra cores and threads give it standing headroom in threaded work even if the measured deltas do not fully show it. For any scenario that values efficiency, platform modernity, or out-of-the-box functionality, the Athlon PRO 3045B is the more compelling entry: it matches the i7-930 within single-digit percentages while drawing 15 W instead of 130 W, and it adds integrated Vega graphics, ECC memory, DDR4, and PCIe Gen 3 that the i7-930 lacks.

The curious footnote is what this pairing demonstrates about progress: a 2-core, 15 W mobile chip from the Zen era trading blows with a 4-core, 130 W desktop flagship from the Nehalem generation, and both ending in the same percentile. The i7-930 wins the scoreboard. The Athlon PRO 3045B arguably wins the argument.