It was . . . okay, but NorthwoodA didn't have the same l2 punch as Northwood B and C, so it struggled in some areas.
The real problem was that Prescott was slower clock per clock than Northwood C, while using more power. Intel's 90nm was a disaster.
And then the x2 showed up and it was all over.
Utter nonsense. Ryzen isn't slower than its previous generation, and it is quite efficient, which is something neither Prescott nor Smithfield ever managed.
As mentioned, the difference between the Northwoods was the FSB. Each FSB bump increased performance slightly, but since you could overclock via FSB back then, overclocking essentially meant getting a FSB upgrade as well. The Northwood As were the first P4s to draw parity with Athlon XPs, if my memory serves correctly. They certainly weren't bad chips.
Prescott was a bit slower per clock, but it also scaled to higher clockspeeds than Northwood, though not nearly as high as Intel had hoped for, due to its power consumption.
I was comparing Prescott to Athlon 64 because thats what it was competing against in 2014 when it launched, and in productivity apps it actually didn't fare too badly, it was behind in gaming however. Which is why I drew comparisons with Ryzen, with regards to the chips relative strengths (productivity/multitasking) and weaknesses (gaming) compared to the competition.