Intel's New Pentium 4 Processor

Clock For Clock Comparison Of Pentium 4 And Pentium III

Yes, I thought I should really do this, although Intel certainly despises me for it. I underclocked one of their great Pentium 4 processors to 1 GHz and compared it with Pentium III 1 GHz.

The P4-sample provided by Intel was not multiplier-locked, so that I could run it at 10 x 100 MHz = 1 GHz without any need to alter the system bus clock.

Ouch! Clock for clock Pentium 4 gets beaten by Pentium III in all but the Quake 3 and the MPEG4 benchmarks! If the Pentium III at 1.13 GHz were available and Intel would have launched Pentium 4 at 1.3 GHz, the difference between the two would have been hardly noticeable. Nevertheless, please don't forget that Pentium III is pretty much at the end of its days. It can't get much faster. Pentium 4 however has a long way to go. Clock speed will soon equalize this nasty defeat.

Clock For Clock Comparison Of Pentium 4 And Athlon

What was done with Pentium III can obviously be done with Athlon as well. In this run an underclocked Pentium 4 at 1.2 GHz (12 x 100 MHz) had to show how it performs against AMD's current flagship.

Compared to Athlon clock-by-clock Pentium 4 is looking even worse. It is barely able to beat Athlon in MPEG4 and the lead in Quake 3 Arena Demo1 is very thin as well. Clock speed and compiler optimization is the only way Pentium 4 will keep the Athlon at arms length.