And it doesn't seem likely that Intel will catch up soon.
Having no plans to put 64-bit on ordinary desktop PCs,
Intel has said that nobody needs it (sorry, Intel, I
could use it right now).
Finding themselves behind in performance, they've made
statements that performance no longer matters.
Seeing AMD demo dual-core first, Intel said recently
"This isn't a horse race."
Intel can still catch up, but it presently appears that
it will take 18 months to do it. Intel will still command
higher market share, because AMD can't produce enough
volume. And AMD, unlike Intel, cannot afford to make any
mistakes.
AMD chips were always better than Intel's. Even back when they made the Duron processor it ran circles around the Pentium Celeron and III.
Built my first AMD computer this year. No problems, price was right. Runs hotter than Intel though so longevity may be an issue. Was thinking about dabbling with water cooling to combat the problem especially when playing Battlefield.
A little story: one of my users was having a bug I could not duplicate. This was when math co-processors were on separate chips from the main CPU. I visited his site, confirmed the problem, opened his box and found an Intel CPU with an AMD co-processor. Went out and bought "genuine intel" co-processor, made the swap--and the bug went away.
A cautionary tale. I **STILL** cannot be 100% certain that an AMD chip will perform identically to the standard; hence I will neither use nor recommend them.
Compatibility is all.
--Boris