[Stony]

AMD has taken the performance lead from Intel. Even though Intel releases higher raw-mhz chips than AMD, AMD has shown thru benchmark that it's archtiecture for the Athlon is superior. A 1.6ghz Athlon is right about on par performance-wise with 2ghz Pentium 4 (even though there's a 400mhz difference in raw clock speed). Imagine how badly the Athlon would spank the P4 if they released their chips clock-for-clock with Intel.

Not to mention AMD is cheaper too. AS far as stability is concerned, Intel and AMD are roughly equal. If that wasn't the case Daimler-Benz or Electronic Arts wouldn't be switching to AMD. Daimler-Benz is going to be using Athlons to power its safety and engineering R&D computers.