does anyone think that maybe the intel system architecture with the memory controller and PCI-e controller on the same piece of silicon has a slight advantage over AMD's (with the PCI-e controller on the mobo-chipset and the memory controller on the CPU) as the GFX card in a intel system can do direct memory accesses a little quicker (less hops and less system overhead)?

just speculating, because the legionhardware results show the phenom bottlenecking the 4870x2 far harder than its slightly lower IPC can explain..