Techreport compares the new Series 600 Pentium 4 CPUs to the previous P4 Series 500 and Extreme Editions along the AMD top performing Athlon 64 processors.

CPUs Compared:
Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz (S939)
Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz (90nm)
Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz
Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4GHz
Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6GHz

Pentium M 755 2.0GHz
Pentium M 755 @ 2.4GHz

Pentium 4 540 3.2GHz
Pentium 4 550 3.4GHz
Pentium 4 560 3.6GHz
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz
Pentium 4 570J 3.8GHz
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz

[b]Pentium 4 640 3.2GHz
Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz
Pentium 4 660 3.6GHz
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz[/b]

Intel’s new CPU core packs fistful of enhancements over the original Prescott core. I’m gonna bust out the bullet points in order to give you the highlights.

2MB of L2 cache — In terms of performance, this is the number-one change. The 600 series and the new Extreme Edition both pack a robust 2MB of L2 cache now, twice as much as older P4s.

Enhanced power management — The 600 series finally brings Intel’s Enhanced SpeedStep technology to the desktop. Previously used in Intel’s mobile processors, SpeedStep dynamically scales CPU clock speed and voltage in response to load.

64-bit extensions — Intel has dubbed its 64-bit extensions EM64T, for Extended Memory 64 Technology, but they are really just a functional clone of AMD’s AMD64 extensions, first implemented in the Opteron processor a couple of years ago.

Execute Disable Bit support — Like the 500J series processors, the new Intel core includes support for the Execute Disable Bit, also called the No Execute (NX) bit by AMD.

Source: TechReport