their performance is just not up to the mark when compared to Intel. when you said you were going to buy AMD, I assumed you planned to spend 5-6k on the processor. at that price point, it makes far more sense to get something the lines of E4300/E4400 than AMD X2 5000+ or anything similar. ofcourse If you go lower, AMD X2 3800/4000/4200+ are far better than Intel's Pentium 4 Dual Core Processors or Celerons. It really depends on the kind of performance one desires, yes you're spot on when you say not everyone is into Overclocking or gaming but a little extra performance never hurts, especially if you're getting it without any extra overclocking/tweaking/modding.