Intel's initial Pentium 4 chips released Monday don't provide a real performance advantage and are often slower when compared with the fastest Athlon chips from Advanced Micro Devices, benchmark testers and analysts say.

Intel's initial Pentium 4 chips released Monday don't provide a real performance advantage and are often slower when compared with the fastest Athlon chips from Advanced Micro Devices, benchmark testers and analysts say. Consequently, the first Pentium 4 chips don't seem to be worth their price right now, they said. Benchmark tests posted by review sites such as Sharky Extreme on Monday indicate that the 1.5-GHz Pentium 4 does outscore the 1.2-GHz Athlon on the "Quake III" game, some video and media editing applications, and relatively theoretical tests on memory bandwidth or scientific calculations. But when it comes to many real-world applications and games other than "Quake III," the difference is inconsequential. On a number of benchmark tests, the first version of Pentium 4 underscores Athlon and even the Pentium III. "For today's buyer, the Pentium 4 simply doesn't make sense. It's slower than the competition in just about every area," wrote Anand Lal Shimpi in Anandtech, a review site. The relatively uninspiring results that accompanied the launch of the chip will be debated for weeks and set the stage for another rousing year of competition between the two companies in 2001. Because of the new architecture behind the Pentium 4, Intel will likely rapidly increase the speed of the chip. AMD, however, will be difficult to outrun.