And luckily we had AMD then, as we do now (only recently), to pick up the slack. Sure I'm exaggerating a bit, but no more than you are to say 'incomparable'.

And luckily we had AMD then, as we do now (only recently), to pick up the slack. Sure I'm exaggerating a bit, but no more than you are to say 'incomparable'. Intel upgrades for the last 7 years have been modest at best. If you need a new machine, sure they'll make a fine replacement. But hardly a reason to upgrade year over year (or even every 2-3 years) for performance and/or functionality alone. I've been sitting on an old i7 Sandy Bridge precisely because Intel hasn't been offering me a compelling reason to upgrade. I'm probably going to finally do it next year... but it won't be to another Intel system.