Kinda but not. AT least the competition is close. I literally bought an i7 7700k based on my "half-ass" keeping up with hardware. I honestly had not heard about Ryzen until 2 hours after I purchased my i7 7700k last Friday. I had been itching to upgrade for the past 3 years so I had actually done a bit more research on the motherboard after Kaby Lake launched, so I was pretty much ready last Friday when my current system started hiccuping real bad.
It's unfortunate because had I been completely lost in terms of hardware launches, I would've done research from scratch. Honestly I doubt I'd end up choosing Ryzen but at least I would've made a more informed decision.
In the end the 7700k is a solid performer still. I'm really glad AMD is back in the game though because competition is good for consumers. I just have a special part in my heart for AMD given I built my very first PC in high school with the original Athlon chip. I then built a Socket 939 Opteron system a few years later that ended up serving as a Bitcoin mining rig. Similarly I bought 4 graphics cards for the Bitcoin mining era so AMD definitely has served me well.
Edit: In reading a bit more after the Ryzen launch I think Intel based motherboards are still the best. Manufacturers have had years working on these and have basically refined them each generation (Z67, 77, 87, 97, 170, 270). The lineups are rock solid. The motherboard availability on the AMD side is still questionable and it might take a while before manufacturers get a full release similar to what they have been doing on the Intel side.
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