If you remember a post where Ross said that his heatsink had somehow become loose from his cpu. He said he was using an intel chip
You've got your facts wrong. It was a motherboard Northbridge chipset where the heatsink came loose and caused the problems, the processor was fine. Also the last Intel CPU I had was clocked at 450mhz. Nowadays I go with AMD for 3 reasons:
1. While Sandy Bridge has shaken things up a bit, for a LONG time AMD has had the best price to performance ratio, especially at the range I buy at. I haven't checked lately, but it used to be if you were looking at a CPU in the $80 - 120 range, AMD was pretty much the best option period.
2. It depends on what you do, but for a lot of CPUs, the performance gains between a cheaper AMD chip and a more expensive Intel one are pretty small on most games, especially considering the money jump. While there are exceptions, Far Cry 2 being a notable one, the majority of games today are GPU-bound, not CPU-bound. For Unigine there's almost NO performance difference between a top-end AMD CPU v. a top-end Intel one. So the extra $100 - $200 you spend on an Intel chip is likely to get you somewhere between 5-10 fps on most games, whereas if you put that same money into a beefier GPU, you're talking anywhere from 20-50fps more. If you're a gamer, it's hard to justify the Intel premium unless you have extra cash to burn, and even then you get a better payoff putting it into the videocard first. If you do a lot of other CPU intensive chores however, Intel CPUs likely pay off more.
3. Intel has proven they are BASTARDS. They've engaged in predatory pricing, monopolistic practices, bribing and blackmailing vendors, a lot of business abuses all round. Back in the early 2000s when AMD was actually kicking Intel's ass, AMD gained almost NO marketshare despite having better products out. Intel was actively engaging in all sorts of illegal practices to supress them and it paid off. Even though they got fined later by the European Union for $1.45 billion , it's really a slap on the wrist compared to all the money they made during that time despite having an inferior product. If they had actually played fair and not broken the law repeatedly over the past decade, then who knows. AMD might have gained more revenue and the market as a whole might be more competitive instead of Intel dominating again. For this reason, unless Intel gains a de facto monopoly again so there are no competitive options, I try to avoid Intel CPUs in general. AMD to the best of my knowledge hasn't done anything shady at all in their business (not counting the GPU department, which is really just ATI rebranded). In fact, they were a supporter of manufacturing computers at rock bottom prices for children in impoverished regions. I think they're overall just a more honest company to give money to.
