Well I know I can't afford a high end Intel CPU and I have a really hard time buying one that is in the upper $100 range also. That is why I bought my AMD T-Bird 1.4GHz last fall and will probably wait till after Christmas to upgrade the box to a KT333 chipset motherboard/CPU combo.
I just can't see spending nearly the entire budget I place on myself for just the CPU and Motherboard like you have to with Intel. When I worked in a shop and could get the benefits of very inexpensive CPU's and motherboards then I would still go with AMD. Because Intel would still be over $400 for just the processor and we would sell them at nearly $700 and that was in 1998-1999/2000.
Plus you can't count on Intel still attempting to use the same type of socket to move into the next CPU line. They are always changing the way the pins are on the chip and that makes it expensive to want to keep upgrading each year or so like some of us do. I just can't justify it to myself to have to upgrade my motherboard if I want to step up a couple of hundred MHz in CPU speed. I guess that is why I stuck with a Slot 1 AMD 700MHz and 1GHz Athlon for nearly two years before going to the T-Bird.
