<p>AMD has dominated for the past few years in both performance/dollar and performance/watt</p>
<p>However, while Intel has been messing around with the Pentium 4 and Netburst architecture (which let AMD gain the lead), Intel has also been building up their fab capacity tremendously. </p>
<p>From what it looks like, now that Intel has a decent processor architecture (Merom/Conroe), they are ready to crank up production and flood the market with cheap 65nm/45nm chips. My guess is that they want a price war that will undercut both Intel and AMD's bottom line; AMD, being the smaller company, will take the hit much harder.</p>
<p>surge, what you're looking at is the old Xeon system. Intel has new pathes opened for the Xeon. Intel Processors are cheaper than AMD's. I'm a fan of both companies. I'm thinking Intel might be trying to buy AMD in the near future. I think if Intel never had heat problems with the netburst structure, we'd be well into a whole new generation. AMD got ahead with the K6 or K7. The switch from Pentium 3 to Pentium 4 was mainly the reason. Intel was stupid to stick with netburst for 5-6 years and came up with little results with the Pentium 4.</p>
<p>amd is not fabricating anything that can compete with intel
conroe spanks x2/opty as it is
of course its new tech vs old tech so you can't really compare em...though its really stupid to waste all your money on a new processor if you want to game(buy a new video card if you wanna do that).</p>
<p>I love the AMDs. I used them when I had my 386s, 486s, and several 586+'s. Damn, those were the days, haha. They worked much better than the Intel's, though there were some compatibility issues with some OSs I tried to use...</p>
<p>But, I got an Intel Chip in my new computer (Dual Core 3.2Ghz). I'm going to install Mac OS X Tiger on it (yep, you can do this on a PC now, though the legality...), and there are less complications on Intel processors and chipsets.</p>
<p>Higher cost pentium Ds are useless except under extreme cooling(DIce/LN2). The pentium D 805 is awesome for the money at only 100 dollars...but the x2 is being slashed in price to 150 dollars, and it mops the floor with every pentium D. Conroe will cost still more and will beat out amd x2.</p>
<p>"surge, what you're looking at is the old Xeon system. Intel has new pathes opened for the Xeon. Intel Processors are cheaper than AMD's. Servers aren't that good, if you wanted a stronger system, you should have gotten FX."</p>
<p>I disagree on all accords. Opterons outperform similarly priced Xeons. Find some benchmarks that show otherwise. Opterons also overclock a lot better and arguably more accessible to the home user (due to socket). Opteron 165/148 (and up)'s deliver great bang for the buck when compared to the FX's (due to overclockability).</p>
<p>Well, the K9 AMD processor will definitely be better than the Conroe. The sad about the pentium D is a Single Core AMD Athlon 64 out-performs it.</p>