I think i7 looks like it's going to be impressive I tend to judge such things after a week or so of being in use when I can see some real world results from overclockers and people who measure performance.
I am thinking that although AMD has been lagging for a while now they will eventually pull something magic out of there bum hole soon, I have owned a number of processors from both companys and to be honest I have been satisfied with every one I do not know if this is a result of me not being into performance hardware (although I do buy it just for the stabillity and addmittedly cool factor) and being more into software and unusal hardware (thats a blanket the covers server hardware). I would consider buying a core i7 for a serious server build before I consider one for a personal workstation as that is the performace that matters to me.