Clarify this for me, please

[Devil's Prophet]

Ouch.

You know, I just defended these smoothness statements that were being shot at by intel believers. But to call me an Intel fanatic? Really. I just am sceptical about everything, not just benchmarks that declare Intel the winner. You are right though that I could search for my own, but I figured it could take days before I find that specific review you mentioned earlier.

Anyway, indeed back on topic.

edit: What you are telling there is indeed what I want to hear.

When I recently upgraded my dad's A64 3800+ to an X2 5600+, I noticed improvements in the stability of the responsiveness of the system. The small hickups I would encounter on the machine, when for example something would get loaded, were like totally gone. It felt like the system was idling for like all the time, but it was in fact doing things. Yay!

That was all on an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition with 2x1GB OCZ ram. I know, why does he need that kind of setup for just surfing and mailing? Even then when Windows (XP) tends to foul up, he complains about the sluggishness of his system, so I need to format an reinstall windows every now and then to keep him satisfied.

Anyway, since I had a Duron 800MHz coupled with a Via KT133A mobo, and since my brother has an nforce 4 based mobo with a venice 4000+, and both were not flawless at some things (think PCI latency patch for Via and some general weirdness for the nforce4 mobo coupled with an X1950Pro) I was determined to from then on I would couple a processor with a chipset of the same brand. That's why a year ago I was looking at the cheap but yet good 690G/V chipset based mobo's to go with a nice brisbane to upgrade my system (see sig - AXP2400+,1GB,nforce2,GF6800).

But now the 780 series of AMD chipsets have arrived, and also the B3 Phenoms. The only reason to keep me going completely for AMD is that Intel is better at power consumption per performance ratio. Since I will be paying my own eletric bills beginning at september, I thought a nice low usage but high performance AND also cheap setup is what I need. Intel fullfills the low usage and the high performance aspect of the equation, but fails to deliver lower prices. Then Tom's HW comes with the 9100 and shows that it has decent potential. I sure hope so that the potential of that chip (2,4GHz at 1,1V) is present in all Phenoms at this very moment.

Anyone who is with me for choosing an Intel chipset for an Intel CPU and an AMD chipset for an AMD CPU, or is that just a load of BS?

edit2: This urge to choose for a complete platform instead of a random combination of hardware started when I first got my Dell Latitude D610 laptop. This is a centrino platform based laptop, and frankly, I never had such a stable AND responsive system. Ever. Even my nForce2 system - of which I thought it was great compared to my KT133A - doesn't respond as smooth and fluent as my Centrino system. I have the EXT-P2P's Discard Time bug on my Abit NF7-S mobo because I use 2 s-ata discs, and I fellt a slight drawback in the potency to deal with loads. Everytime something would stress the system it would hick up. Just the inverse of the effect from a AMD multicore system.