The release of Phenom was a flop. But since then Phenoms have only gotten better. With the TLB bug fixed and B3 stepping introduced. Along with the 9950 outperforming the Q6000. Something tells me that AMD should not be ruled out as of yet.
So your saying Because AMD's best cpu can beat Intel's oldest and slowest quad we shouldn't count them out. Maybe when AMD can compete with the same generation, but I haven't seen that since the days of the Athlon 64.