Why go Intel?
My Phenom 955 @ 3.6GHz (for most things, except winrar extraction) kicks the Core i5 in the nuts. Even on some games like Far Cry 2 my 955 preforms better then the i7. Google the benchmarks. (yeah the i7 IS a better chip then my 955, but the performance difference is so small/not noticeable, so the additional $200+ is not worth it at all).