This thread is funny. I like seeing people repeat the same untruths over and over again, each one believing it just because he heard it from someone else. Reading this thread is like listening to people repeat the falsehood that Macs are better for creative tasks, just because that may have been the case ten years ago.
Here's how it works:
AMD and Intel are both roughly equally good choices for people in the brackets that the manufacturers cater to. They also have roughly equal price:performance ratios when one excludes the processors at the extreme ends of the spectrum that hardly anyone is rich or poor enough to buy. It just happens that Intel caters to people who want very powerful PCs for intensive tasks whereas AMD caters to those with modest needs.
The myth that AMD has a better price:performance ratio is likely to have arisen either:
Because it was true in the past and the truth has been repeated and believed even though it is no longer true, or
Because people haven't been using processors to their full potential. Very few people use all the power in their processor, so I can see how the myth might have arisen that more powerful but more expensive Intel processors are notably worse for price:performance. They aren't. What they might be is poorer value for money for some people, but value for money =/= price:performance. Value for money depends on the performance one needs. If one only needs a little processing power, then a very powerful CPU will be worse value for money than a more modest CPU when their price:performance ratios are equal, since most of the power from the more expensive CPU is not being used. The average person will only use 10% of an i7's power, or maybe less, so it won't be much of a benefit to them. People who use all of their processor's power may have a very different opinion about which processor is the best value for money.
So ultimately, the best choice of processor depends on what your needs are. Buying a processor that is inappropriate for your needs and then complaining that it's not powerful enough or that it's too expensive makes you look like an idiot in the eyes of the few people who know what they're talking about. Those who don't know what they're talking about are likely to believe you and start parroting you. Unfortunately, the second group of people is much more numerous than the first and therefore much more influential on sites that don't have an especially knowledgeable userbase.
If all you want to do is dick around, then it doesn't matter which one you buy. Every processor on the market is good enough to browse the internet and play crappy flash games. Your best bet is to buy a shitty Dell desktop or to build something cheap and only bother with RAM (the biggest bottleneck for most people's PCs) hard drive space and power supply. Never cheap out on your power supply, unless you want an indoor fireworks display.
If your only concern when building a PC is gaming, then you're better off with a mid-range processor. Spending much more than $100 will get diminishing returns as the CPU is no longer the bottleneck. Phenom II CPUs are probably best for this group, because they're cheaper and they offer all the power people need. Gamers are better off saving money on the CPU and spending it on the GPU. They also need to be aware that many games will see little benefit from having more than two cores.
There is one category of gamers that is an exception, and that is people who want to emulate recent consoles. CPUs are the most important component for emulation, and these people are likely to see the difference between AMD and Intel's offerings. It's no surprise that PC gaming forums are full of AMD fanboys whereas emulation forums are full of Intel fanboys. A decent Intel i5, such as a 760, will play almost every game with pcsx2, as will an overclocked Core2. The only warning is that emulators, like many normal PC games, also fail to make full use of more than two cores.
People who want to do serious work, such as those who spend a lot of time rendering or encoding 1080p video, are the people who should be looking seriously at the higher-end Intel processors. The more powerful the better, and the more cores the better, since they are likely to use software that makes full use of all cores.
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And what should you buy if you're still scratching your head and wondering what's going on? If this is the case, I suggest you buy a Mac.
