While I realize that the "audience" on this forum is particularly slanted at gamers and young ones at that, I felt like I should take a stab at providing a little factual basis to a thread that seems to be going south, especially when I read the input stating that "Intel has never been trustworthy". Granted they have had too many missteps the last few years, and they perhaps grew too complacent-much like IBM did after its huge success in the 60's and 70's. But Intel is widely regarded as one of the mosted trusted companies in the world, and backing up that childish statement would not be possible.
To address the initial question of why Intel vs AMD, you need to understand the real marketplace. While AMD has 2 fabs now (planning on closing the older) Intel has 10 fabs just in the US. It cost $2.5 billion for AMD to build the new Dresden facility, which was a huge gamble on their part to attempt to address the indescribably huge advantage Intel has in production alone. And new fabs are estimated to cost $7 billion in 2007, so Intel has a huge, nearly impossible moat to cross in this area. And while AMD has almost achieved parity in chips for PC sales, this is only a very recent trend and they lag significantly far behind in the mobile market, which overtook the PC market in 2005. Why do you think IBM sold off its business to Lenovo-the long term margin and growth in this area is decidely less than exciting. And when Apple went looking for a good partner to fuel its future growth, they went with Intel-not AMD. While the home PC market is important in the US, the business market worldwide is vastly larger and Intel probably views the money lost to American gamers as a nit.
And then you have to look at the amount of research dollars spent. For instance, in 2002 Intel spent $4 billion vs AMD's paltry $816 million. It an industry that is all about technological advancements, it is hard to believe that anyone would think that AMD will ever be more than a niche player compared to Intel. Intel has so much greater capitalization, production capacity, and diversification that even years of self-destructive behaviour couldn't put a dent in their advantage. I am glad that AMD is out there, as it makes Intel have to stay competitive, and I think that AMD's current product is very good and the place to spend your consumer dollars right now. Everyone loves David vs Goliath stories, but when it comes to spending your investment dollars, put your money in Intel stock vs AMD every day of the week. AS they used to say, nobody ever got fired buying Big Blue ;-)
For those of you willing to go beyond reading other's faceless posts and actually are interested in getting factual data when forming your own opinion, try doing some real research. Also I included a few links below for your reading enjoyment.