ok spooky6075, if you dont know how much better the core 2 duo series is than amd's anything, then i take it you havent kept up with cpu news for the past year. i recommend you look at some benchmarks on websites like tomshardware.com and anandtech.com and several others.
no one in the computer industry can deny that intel is crushing amd in everything right now. im not an intel fanboy, in fact i have two amd machines, however benchmarks are benchmarks you cant argue against them.
muz: i couldnt disagree with you more, i mean come on man, you're saying core 2 is "arguably better", well the only thing amd could beat the core 2 duo in is perhaps the packaging. thats something that you would call arguable, hard facts proven over a long time: not an argument.
however spooky6075 you must know that amd has been down and out for about a year now in comparison to intel, but they have been working on the Barcelona series of processors which will come out later this year, it is not entirely clear whether these will beat the core 2 duo processors that are out right now. Intel is also going to be releasing new cpus later this year (45 nm). most think that amd will not stand a chance against either the current or the future intel cpus, but all we know for sure is that if you must buy a computer right now intel is the only way to go.