What is current king of the hill were I ordering a general purpose desktop tomorrow Ernest ?
x86 is still desktop king.
ARMs are used for portable devices (like your phone) and other embedded systems like routers.
If you need raw horsepower, x86 is your choice. If you need really low power consumption, ARM wins. They really serve orthogonal markets, very little overlap.
A 1 GHz ARM is pushing it to get 1000 MIPS; an Atom processor (lower power x86 based core) at 1 GHz delivers about 2200 MIPS. The ARM does it at about 0.3W; the Atom pulls about 0.7W.
Now to your question:
Intel and AMD own the landscape for General Purpose computers....
For Gamers and Video processors the top end Intel processors are the fastest and most expensive....
In my humble opinion for General usage AMD delivers the best Performance per buck...when you consider the whole platform including motherboard...
I just assembled a machine that has an ASUS Motherboard with the new 880 AMD chip ,...ill handle the new SATA III (6 Gb/sec and the new USB 3 ....and had BIOS ready for the AMD Thuban 6 processor chip.
Runs very nicely,...responsive and rarely encounters anything on the web that slows it down.
Motherboard and processor under half the price of the top end Intel chip.
Not as fast though...I guess...but for what I do...I doubt the intel would be faster. I do have 4 Gig of memory but rarely get over 50 & usage....
But my criteria is to have a machine that is always waiting ON ME.....
No man should wait on a Machine.....