Can you please post the url of an article on Tom's that mentions that? I read that site pretty religiously and have never seen anything like that. But it's a monster site, and I might have missed it.
My main machine at home right now is an AMD 1.33 (before they started using the XP designation.) It worked absolutely fantastic, and I wholeheartedly recommend buying AMD CPU's.
On Pricewatch.com, the AMD XP 2600 is $230. On Tom's the closest Intel chip above the XP 2600 is the Intel Pentium 4 2.6. Pricewatch has that one for $236. In this case, I think the Intel is definitely the better value.
At a lower price point, you can get the AMD XP 2100 for $79. On Tom's, the closest Intel chip (IMHO) is the P IV 2.2. This one sells for: $175
In this case, it looks like the AMD offers comparable performance but is almost half as expensive.
In this case, I'm looking at the Quake III Arena benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2003...charts-22.html
Here is an article describing Compaq laptops containing the AMD processor:
http://www.computingreview.com/AMD+N...5_1744crx.aspx
Sadly, I did find this article when I looked to see if Dell is using AMD.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/cgi-bin/uk/p...cgi?id=2076782
On the other hand, this article suggests that Dell may be embracing AMD's 64-bit offering:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/28366.html
Go figure...