I'd lose the brand loyalty and judge by benchmarks alone, since they are the best indicator of performance. In gaming, a £150-odd AMD64 processor can compete with the £1000 extreme edition and run much, much cooler and have a lot less power draw, while a £300 AMD will destroy it:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=9
Have you heard about the Prescott heat problems? NVIDIA's nForce motherboards for AMD processors are extremely high quality, faster and better featured than any of the Intel-made boards. You also won't need to buy a whole new motherboard for dual-core with AMD unlike Intel. A lot has changed since the Pentium III days, and Intel lost it's performance crown as soon as the AMD64 came out and none of Intel's releases have changed this.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=9
Have you heard about the Prescott heat problems? NVIDIA's nForce motherboards for AMD processors are extremely high quality, faster and better featured than any of the Intel-made boards. You also won't need to buy a whole new motherboard for dual-core with AMD unlike Intel. A lot has changed since the Pentium III days, and Intel lost it's performance crown as soon as the AMD64 came out and none of Intel's releases have changed this.
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