A theoretical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Soave, Twu and Boston-Mathias attractive terms was performed with the Redlich-Kwong EoS. Special attention was paid to the variations of the alpha functions and their first and second derivatives with respect to temperature. Contrary to the Soave function, abnormal behaviors of the derived Twu and Boston-Mathias functions were evidenced in the temperature range commonly covered by industrial applications. The unsuccessful variations of the derived alpha functions observed with these two last models strengthen the interest of the Soave equation for the modeling of derived thermodynamic properties. The accuracy of pure component data modeling by means of the cubic equation of state is discussed in a second part. (C) 2008 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.