Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
It was a overclocked 2.66GHz Dual Core Conroe ($530) against an overclocked 2.8GHz Athlon 64 FX60 ($1015). As for the benchmarks, Intel claimed to be 20% better than the AMD at the same clockspeeds, but the difference was more of a 30%-40% performance increase. So for roughly half the price of the FX-60, the Conroe pretty much kicked it's a$$. The most expensive Conroe will be the 3.0Ghz Extreme Edition version, probably priced around the FX-60. But ofcourse the FX-60 will appear primitive when compared to the XE Conroe. There is a small chance that Intel will manage to WORSEN it's chips from now to when they're released, so I doubt that the performance will be worse. Even better, maybe, but not worse. Too late in the game for that.
And Conroe isn't exactly designed from the ground up, but compared to the Netburst architecture, its revolutionary. The heat problems with current Pentium 4 and Pentium-D processors won't exist in Conroe.
As for moving to another motherboard, assuming you have AMD...thats what you do when you build a new system. Thats also what you get for picking a side. You picked AMD, and Intel came out with a better processor, so it was all your own doing, no need to bash one or the other.
Conroe CAN work on existing motherboards. The motherboard has to be LGA755 socket, and (here's the catch right now) has to have a Intel 975X chipset. Only Intel's high-est end motherboards currently have this chipset. After Conroe's release, Intel will obviously make Conroe-compliant budget chipsets, but if anyone wants to prepare for Conroe right now, they've gotta pay $$.
As a bit of added punch, XtremeSystems users have obtained Conroe processors. A 2.13Ghz Conroe was overclocked to ~3.3Ghz ON AIR COOLING. I emphasize the air cooling part to show how cool these processors run (they consume roughly 55W of power, a tiny amount).
You can expect to buy a 2.4Ghz Dual Core Conroe for $316 at release, and have it overclock to 3.0Ghz on the stock Intel HSF.