Steven Walton, of LegionHardware, has been doing a very interesting comparison. He’s interested in getting the best possible CPU for a gamer willing to pay around $220 for his CPU. This is a nice price point because it seems to be around what most gamers are ready to pay to have a fast machine, and not too high (to avoid paying too much for little more performance).
I’ll let you check the details (benchmarks for memory, CPU performance and PC games), but the comparison tells that the Intel CPU is still the best bang for your buck, but the difference is quite small.
If he had to choose, Steven Walton says he would go for the Intel CPU. I admit easily (I already wrote here about that) that I don’t wont to come back to a monopolistic position for Intel, so I’d choose AMD and the Athlon64 X2 instead. But the choice is yours (my next machine will wait a few more weeks).