I've got to agree with the engineer from Oregon. The misinformation here is pretty deep and very few messages address the actual problem you are reporting. Your AMD K6/2 333 is a Pentium II class system and it isn't very fast at all. I have several systems, a INTC p2/233, an AMD K6/2 350, a AMD K6/2 400, a INTC P3/500 and a INTC P3/700. Your P4 is MUCH faster than my P3/700, and my INTC systems smoke my AMD systems, hands down.
Your real question was "It doesn't seem right that my new P4 is slower than my AMD K6/2 333"
The answer is, you're right, that isn't right. It sounds like you've got a problem with the hardware or with the OS to me. But you should call your vendor and complain. I think Gateway has on-site support, so they'll send a GE Appliance repairman out to fix your computer, and if the problem is simple enough, he'll fix it quickly and you'll realize just how deep the BS was getting in this thread.
As far as the personal opinions here are concerned, AMD grabbed the lead in processor speed for about a month with the 1ghz barrier. INTC has reclaimed the lead with the 1.7ghz (which is, despite the claims, faster than a 1.4ghz Athalon). At comparable performance levels (1.4ghz Athalon vs. 1.4ghz P4), Intel is only about $50 more expensive. For this extra investment, you get a level of Q/A from top to bottom that AMD can't seem to match. I believe a big part of this is that AMD does not control the motherboard chipset (VIA) and that many of the quirks and odd behaviors attributed to AMD are caused by this fact. I was a big fan of AMD until I encountered very similar problems with reliability and stability on four or five different AMD systems. I then moved to Intel with a p3/500, which was the flagship at the time. The reliability was rock solid and the performance gain was astronomical. Until AMD released the Athalon, there was nothing that could touch the P3 (which is NOT a butchered Celeron, that guy DOES have it backward). When I saw friends and associates having the same kind of issues with Athalon systems that I had with K6/2 and K6/3 systems, my next purchase was a P3/700. The Intel chips just make the foundation of a much more reliable machine.
Note, I am currently a IT systems engineer in Folsom. I started switching to Intel CPUs long before I was hired by the company, and neither Intel nor I actually "sought" each other out, it just happened this way. These are my opinions and my experiences, and do not reflect the opinions of Intel Corporation. I believe that AMD gives good competition to Intel and that there are people who are willing to sacrifice quality and stability in their PCs to save a little money. Let those people buy AMDs. It is my opinion that the smart consumer will spend the extra $50 to go with Intel. You'll see some people respond about some of the flawed releases Intel has had recently. This is simply a matter of name recognition. If Microsoft releases an OS with a flaw in it, it is front page news. If Redhat or another Linux distributor, or Mac/OS, or any other M/S competitor does the same thing, if it gets to print at all it is a miracle. The same thing applies here. AMD and VIA have their share of fubars... they just don't get paraded around in the press like Intel does when they make a mistake. It isn't fair, but when you're seen as the Big Dog, everyone wants to take a swing at you.