While I have been an AMD guy for quite sometime (more bang for the buck). I can acknoledge the fact that generalplot has proven his P4 2.4c is a force to be reckoned with. Since AMD uses made up numbers to state their performance, comparison isn't always an exact science. The original 3200+ rating came out before the Intel 800mhz fsb I believe. It also seems that AMD was misrating their higher clocked processors in comparison with Intel (the P4's generally went up by 200mhz and the AMD's ratio of increase wasn't always even to that of the P4). The clock speeds between models were so small it has always been a lot more cost effective to get a lower clocked model. Comparisons will still be made and Intel will still win in a number of them, but really it's partly AMD's fault for overestimating some of their ratings (this isn't saying AMD is better it's just saying that since AMD's models are based on theoretical numbers there is room for error yet with Intel the performance increase is more predictable).
For me buying AMD has been more about getting something fast for very little money. I'm not poor but I don't want to go spending double for a PC that might only be 20% faster when I have too many other interests that cost money as well (this extra cost isn't just buying Intel CPU's of course I'm talking about buying higher end video cards, ram etc.) The price difference between Intel and AMD has closed quite a bit recently so it's not as much of an issue. Low end Athlon 64 cpu's are quite cheap though and are definitely one of the best choices for a midrange system at the moment.
If you have been stuck using one brand for a while it's really hard to give out an unbiased opinion or even to imagine what using the other would be like. I use AMD's at home but only Intel's at work. I find the Intel's at work to sometimes be slower than I would expect but I can't claim they are slow because they are IBM which are probably slower, ram which is probably slower, video cards etc etc. that would all be slower than an enthusiast built system. The main reason that AMD outperforms Intel Clock for Clock is because of the inefficient P4 architecture (slower, hotter, power hungry but gets the job done). If you look at the Pentium M's (based on the P3) you will see that they are very efficient processors.
I'm basically describing the difference in the instruction sets that each chip has, and not the architecture. Talking too fast without thinking of the words being used. It's a bad habit.
