People need to keep in mind that the CPU alone isn't the only issue. Like them or not, Intel still makes the finest chipsets in the world, and that is often the bottleneck in a PC. Even notice how slow a budget 3GHZ PC feels? Yeah, the CPU is fine, but those VIA/Ali chipsets suck. Intel chips don't siphon everything off the PCI bus.
2002 called, they want their chipsets back.
I take it you haven't seen a list of 'errata' for the average Intel chipset. It is just as bad as the list for VIA, ULi, ATI, nVidia ...
ULi currently make one of the best chipsets, should you ever bother to read a review. As they use a standard PCIe interconnect their southbridge also works with ATI northbridges (which is a blessing, as ATI haven't quite got with the chipset making yet, their current southbridge is rather average).
