Intel would have no reason to rig the Conroe to make it look better - the architecture, and everything about the processor, is simply superior to that of the AMD64 - as is expected. Also, they know very well the consequences of "rigging" everything in their favour - since enthusiasts will be watching closely for benchmarks when the actual processor launches anyway, so the whole idea is just twisted because some are still in denial. Which is interesting in itself - since I see here that there are some old AMD fanatics that seem to have become... Reformed, I guess we'll say.
The thing is, Intel already
has "combined" "AMD's" gaming with it's reliability. The main reason AMD64 did so well in gaming was it's shorter pipeline - where games are concerned, the longer the pipeline, the longer things take. Whereas the shorter AMD64 pipeline processed information far quicker - branch prediction could do nothing for Intel where gaming was concerned, but hyper-pipelining was designed with media in purpose, not gaming. Plus, with Conroe's widened pipeline (Thus, 4 instructions per cycle instead of 3) the Conroe does more than the AMD64, despite the longer pipeline. It's simply better in every way - minus the memory controller. Manufacturing in the bulk Intel does, it would cost them money when they can get similar performance increases in other ways, for less. It's a big corporation after all.
That said, the Conroe is the competition for AMD64 that we never saw. However, I've heard from sources inside Intel that they've already got a new successor core to Conroe through several stages of development. Needless to say - Intel isn't standing still anymore. We're just waiting on it's competition - so we can all get that competitive price war we've all been waiting for.