InQuest has posted a great article about the Athlon 4 vs the Pentium 4.
Another separate feature is an expansion of AMD?s 3DNow! to a new level, dubbed 3DNow! Professional. This new Pro version includes 52 additional instructions that are 100% backward compatible with Intel?s SSE instruction set. This singular feature will do much to sabotage Intel?s effort to create Intel specific, or Intel optimized benchmarks. Though there are not many applications where the P3 or P4 can show a distinct performance advantage over Athlon, where these do exist it is very often attributable to the existence of SSE optimizations and the absence of 3DNow optimizations. Photoshop is one glaring example, but there are numerous others. We expect that AMD has done a world-class implementation of SSE and will demonstrate an exhilarating benchmark score increase, further distancing Athlon from Intel?s CPUs.
Here's a quote about the Intel Pentium 4:
The P4?s actual maximum thermal dissipation is much higher than was commonly understood. While AMD?s TDP spec represents its true maximum power dissipated under worst-case conditions, the worst case power dissipation for the P4 was actually 33% higher than Intel?s published TDP. When comparing apples to apples, the P4 does not have a power dissipation advantage over Athlon, as Intel suggested. In fact, the reverse may be true. Regarding P4 thermals, we will discuss why users may be tempted to apply radical thermal solutions to the P4, but that still may not solve all of its thermally related performance problems. In particular we disclosed the P4?s thermal throttling mechanism that will reduce CPU performance by 50% when triggered by specific heat related conditions.
Read more here.
Another separate feature is an expansion of AMD?s 3DNow! to a new level, dubbed 3DNow! Professional. This new Pro version includes 52 additional instructions that are 100% backward compatible with Intel?s SSE instruction set. This singular feature will do much to sabotage Intel?s effort to create Intel specific, or Intel optimized benchmarks. Though there are not many applications where the P3 or P4 can show a distinct performance advantage over Athlon, where these do exist it is very often attributable to the existence of SSE optimizations and the absence of 3DNow optimizations. Photoshop is one glaring example, but there are numerous others. We expect that AMD has done a world-class implementation of SSE and will demonstrate an exhilarating benchmark score increase, further distancing Athlon from Intel?s CPUs.
Here's a quote about the Intel Pentium 4:
The P4?s actual maximum thermal dissipation is much higher than was commonly understood. While AMD?s TDP spec represents its true maximum power dissipated under worst-case conditions, the worst case power dissipation for the P4 was actually 33% higher than Intel?s published TDP. When comparing apples to apples, the P4 does not have a power dissipation advantage over Athlon, as Intel suggested. In fact, the reverse may be true. Regarding P4 thermals, we will discuss why users may be tempted to apply radical thermal solutions to the P4, but that still may not solve all of its thermally related performance problems. In particular we disclosed the P4?s thermal throttling mechanism that will reduce CPU performance by 50% when triggered by specific heat related conditions.
Read more here.