[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]And your point being? Are you saying the Pentium 4 was slower at every application? Clearly, it wasn't. Was it a better processor? Not for most people, but it was better at certain things. [/citation]
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/7417
Yes it was faster in some productivity apps, but is the ~20% performance increase worth the 30% increase in power consumption (and relatively, heat)?
Northwood was "good" compared to Athlon XP's, but with Prescott Intel was fighting with raw clockspeed with little regard to power consumption or heat. They just wanted to top the benchmarks in any way possible.
Did the Athlon 64 consume less power? Yes
Did the Athlon 64 produce less heat? Yes
Did the Athlon 64 outperform the Pentium 4? Sometimes
Was the Athlon 64 cheaper than the Pentium 4? Sometimes, but sometimes it was also more expensive.
AMD being left out since the Core 2, is their own damn fault for being too confident with the X2 and FX line. Nehalem is just an additional kick in the balls, but AMD is starting to catch-up with Intel (though a little bit slowly). AMD seems to be more concerned now with selling by volume rather than getting the performance crown.
I would have gone with the Athlon 64 before, but Intel seems to be priced lower before where I live.