My god, i could care less how much faster intel chips are theorhetically, because if anyone bothered to actually compare intel and amd's cheapest equally clocked chips, and AMD's most expensive vs intels...hell even intels $1500 chips against the near identical counterparts that cost 1/4 - 1/3 the price....THEIR PERFORMANCE IS BASED ON SYNTHETIC BENCHMARKS.
When the QX6850 extreme edition came out at $1500, in real world benchmarks it was 10-35% then the $180 AMD dualcore....despite the QX having 4x the cache, 16% faster memory speed, and....what else...oh yes TWICE AS MANY CORES. Despite amd having 16% slower memory in that test....the 6000+ still had 25% better memory perforance. Even the QX6850 extreme compared to the Q6800....which was idenetical save for the extreme QX having a larger cache, averaged 20% faster then the Q6800....with only $1000 price difference.
I don't deny intel has the faster chip....but not to the degree that everyone makes out. Synthetic performance doesn't mean anything. Intel still fails with memory performance pathetically, with AMD currently having 25 or so chips, ranging from dual core 939, to AM2/+ chips that have better memory performance than ALL of intels systems.
AMD is still light years ahead in 64bit...because intel can't cut it in that area....they have 5 years ahead of intel, so when people actually are smart enough to use 64bit OS's and software with the 64bit cpu's and hardware they spend $1000's on intel won't look so pretty..and by the time they catch up there AMD will be ready with the 128bit systems or whatever the next-gen platform may be.
AMD still owns the server side tech, which is what really matters as most money is derived from server sales, not desktop.
I would rather spend $1000-1200 building an AMD quad core system with 8 gigs of ram and 4-way crossfire, overclock the hell out of it....and actually be able to upgrade my cpu then spend the same amount for an intel cpu and motherboard that has marginal performance gains, that will require a new cpu, motherboard, and ram when they release the same chip, with a different pin config and no tech changes aside from larger cache every 3 months.
There is no software currently available outside of 3D animation, photo & movie editing that can take full advantage of ANY hardware released in the past year. Funnily enough, the corporate world that deals in bussiness that utilize those types of software, use AMD, because AMD excels in multithread compatible apps, more so in 64bit versions, they do it cheaper, and use less power as they do it too.
So stop crying about the fact that intel chips can run FEAR or OBLIVIAN at 400FPS in XP and AMD can't....stop complaining about amd quad core performance when you're most likely running XP, or if you are running Vista it's 32bit...AND UPGRADE TO AN OS THAT TAKES FULL ADVANTAGE OF MULICORE CHIPS IN ALL APPLICATIONS AND ALLOWS FOR MORE THAN 2GIGS OF MEMORY.
Every app i run in 64bit vista ultimate, 32 or 64bit splits the load across all cores....and my 3.6ghz OCed toledo corre 939 dual core AMD and 4 gigs of DDR running 640mhz still scores a hardware index of 5.9, and as much as i may want to upgrade to new hardware to play with, i by no means NEED to do so.
AMD's equally clocked quad compared to intels equally, and cheapest quad..is between 5% slower and 10% faster....however the intel chip is 40% more expensive..so stop listening to marketing, and get a clue. mmk?