Allways thought it was pretty strange the way the two companies CPU development went from the Athlon 64 all the way to the Phenom. By there budgets (which Intel completely destorys AMD) you would think that Intel would have beat AMD to the Onboard Memory Controller/ Hypertransport/Monolith Quad by a long shot. Especially the Memory Controller that AMD has had for years. Seems the small guy gets there first everytime, which never happens in any other hardware.
That's called "Intel resting on their laurels."
Either way, I don't think anyone realistically expects Deneb to overtake i7, but it is going to be a much more attractive option to Intel's Yorkfields. And obviously, it's going to be a lot better than Phenom 1. For the price, that's enough for me and most others. It's not like today's software really NEEDs absolutely bleeding edge. All of the apps and games I have run well with my x2 6000+, and the Deneb is probably going to fix what little slowness I feel. Why drop hundreds of dollars more?