I will stick to Intel. Although Athlon outperforms Intel's counterparts in many of the PC mark tests and even Super Pi test, Athlon is not as good in Front Side Bus and memory management. Intel P4 can take up dual channel bandwidth but Athlon is a little bit slow in Ram test. Another bad thing about Athlon is the L2 cache. While intel can provide 2MB cache, most of AMD CPUs only provide 512K, which is only that povided by Athlon. I think CPU's performance depends much on L2 cache and frequency, so I still sticking with Intel.

The worst thing about AMD is that it is trying to market its CPUs by a performance value,  say 3000+, but the clock speed is much lower then 3G. I really don't like this strategy. If AMD is so proud of its CPUs, why not compute with Intel on the same ground?
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The reason why they put 3000+ because they run on a different theory. AMD's specialty is making them run at lower clocks and emulate the actual speed they run at, conserving energy. AMD's have 2mb L2 cache as well, maybe you should do a little more research on a topic. Almost every new AMD 64 cpu provides 1mb L2 cache now. And the biggest difference between these 2 processors, is that for 3000+ you get at the same price as an Intel 3.0ghz, you get 64bit capabilities. You don't seem to get that's the whole new thing. In a few years, most computers will probably be running 64bit. Most servers nowadays run on 64bit processors, but AMD has made the headstart to have them at home for the same cheap price. Xeons and Opterons have used 64 bit for a while, but to get one of those for home use is a waste of money. That's why AMD has their Athlon 64's.
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