The French Hardware.fr site managed to test the first Pentium 4 CPU sample built on the 0.13micron Northwood core. The guys used ASUS P4B266 (i845D) mainboard for Pentium 4 CPUs, Gigabyte GA-7VTXH (KT266A) for Athlon XP CPUs, two 256MB PC2100 CAS 2.5 DDR DIMM modules, GeForce3 based graphics card and IBM 75 GXP 15GB HDD. All the benchmarks were run under Windows 2000 with SP2 and freshest drivers dating back to December 10, 2001. The clock frequency multiplier of pentium4 Northwood was unlocked (like that of any test sample), which let the guys use it as three different CPUs. In other words, they tested Pentium 4 2AGHz, Pentium 4 2.2GHz and Pentium 4 1.5AGHz.
At first, they carried out some comparative testing of Pentium 4 (Willamette) and Pentium 4 (Northwood) working at the same 1.5GHz. For a better comparison they also added the results for Athlon XP 1700+ (1.46GHz) and 1800+ (1.53GHz). However, it is interesting only from the theoretical point of view. Have a look at the table below:

Performance gain as a result of the shift from Willamette to Northwood core (1.5GHz)
Application	3DMark 2001	Quake3 Arena	Flask MMX	Flask SIMD	Gogo MP3	Maya 4.0	CC Winstone 2001
Performance Gain	9%	14%	13%	11%	7%	16%	7%

As we see, the doubling of the L2 cache size (from 256KB to 512KB) provided a significant performance gain: from 7% in Winstone up to 16% in Maya. Not bad at all, we should say.
Then come the results obtained by Pentium 4 Northwood and four different Athlon XP processors, namely: 1600+, 1700+, 1800+ and 1900+ in Winstone and Maya benchmarks. These are only two benchmarks that is why we wouldn’t dare make any conclusions so far. Probably the guys decided not to post the detailed numeric results obtained being afraid to fall into Intel’s disgrace, which usually gets very nervous when the performance values appear disclosed before the official announcement of the processor. However, we have to point out that Athlon XP proved faster in CC Winstone, while in Maya 4.0 Athlon XP 1900+ outperformed Pentium 4 (Northwood) 2AGHz but fell behind Pentium 4 (Northwood) 2.2GHz.
And in conclusion we will take a look at the results of overclocking experiments carried out for 0.13micron Pentium 4 processor. As we have expected, the outcome was really impressive: in a wink the CPU turned into Pentium 4 2.53GHz (19x133MHz) with 533MHz system bus (133Mhz Quad Pumped), which is expected to come out officially a considerable while later.
Of course, the guys also carried out some tests of this monster and compared its performance with that of Pentium 4 (Northwood) 2.2GHz and Athlon XP 1900+:

Application	3DMark 2001	Quake3 Arena	Flask MMX	Flask SIMD	Gogo MP3	Maya 4.0
Pentium 4 2.53GHz	104%	112%	119%	114%	114%	114%
Pentium 4 2.2GHz	100%
Athlon XP 1900+	98%	88%	100%	98%	94%	94%

You will agree that it is pretty astonishing. :-) It’s a pity that Pentium 4 (Northwood) seem very unlikely to become "an overclocker’s choice" unlike Celeron (Tualatin), because with the price of $420 in 1,000-unit quantities Pentium 4 2AGHz will hardly ever become very popular among overclocking fans (especially since 2.2GHz model costs the whole $610). For a better comparison: the retail price for Athlon XP 1900+ lies between $250-$270, according to Pricewatch.
We would like to remind you that Pentium 4 (Northwood) CPUs with 2Ghz and 2.2GHz core clock should be announced on January 7, 2002 (see this news story).