Not really. I simply buy the CPU which performs the best and has great motherboards that have acceptable driver support. I owned AMD chips from the first Athlon 1ghz until the Core 2 Duo was released. Athlons, Palomino's, thunderbirds, and Athlon XP, and X2's. I personally owned about a dozen different chips, not including hundreds I sold to customers.
See... I along with countless AMD fans way back when they beat Intel to the 1ghz mark had a habit of really taking that big win and just rubbing it in, twisting the knife, and adding salt. I had an attitude much like you see here among the current AMD/ATi crowd. Then along came C2D and a very wealthy Intel who was committed to never endure a similar b*tch slapping again, and ever since they've made exceptional chips. Couple that with me growing up, being a more responsible business owner, and realizing how much extra time I had to spend on every single AMD rig that I sold to a customer because of some quirk or another.... I just figured that opportunity cost was king and I'd stay with selling a product that rarely ever returned due to "problems" after it had left the building with it's new owner.
Oh. And FYI... I use AMD chips exclusively for paper weights. I simply used that photo because of the pins being on the CPU rather than the socket itself.
Here is a super sweet Celeron 450 and a Pentium 4 521-ht. If I ever come across a usable socket 775 board, i'll add what remaining spare parts to complete a system and sell it to a neighbor for an internet PC. Same goes for a couple E5300's which I cannot seem to find right now. Actually... I was surprised how well that chip played most games when paired up with an 8800gts.
http://www.kalionzes.net/computers/intelchips.jpg
