saying that "intel will always beat AMD" is idiotic and naiive, currently they done even beat amd in the server market, and basically from 1992-2005 (except for a short time in 1998) AMD was ahead of intel
the chips up to the AM5x86 performed identical to intel components regarding efficiency per clock cycle as they basically were identical except AMD offered higher clock speeds on some of their Am386 chips
the AMD K5 outperformed the Pentium clock per clock by 20%
the K6-3 Outperformed the Pentium 2 Clock per clock by 33%
The Athlon (depending on model) Completely curbstomped the Pentium 3
The Athlon XP and later athlon 64 was far ahead of the Pentium 4
The Athlon 64x2 did what the single core did to the pentium 4, to the Pentium D
Intel had nothing that could compete with AMD until the Core series
From what I've seen actually, the AMD FX-8350 Vishera has been putting up a pretty good show against the i7-3770K Ivy Bridge in video editing.. But, if it comes to gaming save some cash on a lower level CPU and put it into your GPU, and like Logan always says Sandy 2500k all the way baby
I think the sweet spot for gaming is the i5 3570K and a 7970 gpu. Used to be the GTX670 but the newer amd drivers made the 7970 a far better option (guess who got a GTX670). That is for single montior gaming.
Funny thing is the Intel vs AMD war is probably going to flip in favor of AMD for 2013-2014 and who knows what it will do after that... Flip again or watch ARM enter the race. Who knows.
I think ARM will soon be a serious contender in the PC market when you look at how fast they are advanceing its mindblowing. It took arm 5 years to go from ~500mhz (iPhone) to quad 2ghz (Tegra 3) for x86 it took around 9 from ~500mhz in 1998 to quad 2ghz in 2007.
Considering the low power usage and low heat out put of an ARM chip you could probably just overclock a Tegra to where it can compeate with a modern mid range x86 without too much problem. While currently no arch really compeats with x86 in the pc market if you look at the larger market of just ARM chips vs x86 I wouldent be surprised if more ARM chips are sold each year than x86.