At present, unequivocally go Intel. Conroe looks like a real monster that delivers incredible value. The problem is they may hard to find for awhile. But even getting a 6300 or a 6400 and OCing the snot out of it will give you a fabulous machine.
Man, I wish this stuff had come out when I was doing my system build. Maybe I'll ask my boss for one at work.
I am really amazed at all the results I'm seeing. Conroe looks like a hands-down winner, and in a year or so, after the motherboards stabilize and the chips come back down in price, that's where I'm going for my rig.
The big issue for Intel is that NetBurst CPUs almost killed that company. That was Craig Barrett's baby, and he was the worst CEO Intel has had. The guy made a lot of bad decisions on the technology side. Intel's stock tanked further last week because they still have a huge inventory overhang of the NetBust (oops, I mean NetBurst) chips which they have been frantically slashing prices on.
Now, with Conroe out, no one will ever want to buy those pieces of NetBurst shee-ot except for corporate IT departments that don't know any better.
The only reason they got away with their stupid NetBurst product was their relative monopoly position in the CPU market, and the fact that most of the channel (Dell, etc.) was pretty much bound by contract and Intel's market position to use that crap. NetBurst was a total crap product produced by a company that was fat, dumb and happy in their monopoly position, thanks in part to Barrett's mismanagement.
Mistakes like NetBurst kill companies all the time. The only reason Intel will survive is because of its incredibly built-up position in the market, which AMD, through great engineering, somehow managed to partially undermine. Intel richly deserved it. We should all be grateful to AMD for forcing Intel to compete again.
Another problem Intel has is that it can't immediaitely flood the market with its new flagship CPUS, despite all today's hype, because it has all these other crap chips to get rid of. Basic economics. They have vast quantities of inventory they can't get rid of and most of their fabs were dedicated to cranking out NetBurst crap. They say openly that no more than 25% of their output for this year will be Conroe. Their stock will likely continue to tank for the rest of this year. Conroe will take longer to really take hold then a lot of enthusiasts believe.
AMD will be back, too. They have an established record now. Anyone on these boards who counts them out or says "AMD is dead" or some other nonsense, just because Intel finally started doing again what it was supposed to be doing in the first place, is a fool.