personally... i think it looks like processors are splitting up performance wise the way gpu's did awhile ago... for instance, intel's FSB is going to bottleneck it... and now the athlon 64 doesnt perform the most work per clock anymore. of course, their hypertransport lets them expand and keep up with faster memory speeds, and it will therefore be better for massive memory dependant applications. of course, when it comes to applications that require pure processing power, the new core 2 chip will simply outperform if the fsb doesnt bottleneck it.
likewise ATI stopped making more pixel pipelines (still at 16 with the x1900xtx with the same count as the x800 series) in their GPU's, and expanded to 48 vertex shaders with the x1900 series... and nvidia expanded to 20 and 24 pixel pipelines, leaving their vertex shader at a max of what.. 8? this isn't just one chip being better than the other really anymore... despite the 7900gtx being newer with higher clocks, the x1900 series still seems to outperform it in a few areas quite easily.. most likely due to its 48 vertex shaders.
when applications become more memory hungry (as they always do)... athlon 64's will begin to outperform by a lot if intel doesnt do something about it... and AMD will have to improve their architecture. kind of how nvidia will not truly take the crown of the ultimate perform in all games until they add more vertex shaders... or ATI if they dont add more pixel pipelines.
