I'm not going to get into the Intel sux/Athlon rulez thing - it's waaay too tired. But I will say though that IMHO there has never been a better CPU for hobbyists than the AMD Athlon/Duron lineup. Rock solid cores and kick-@$$ over-clockability. What else are we looking for? They're cheap too (esp. compared to Intel's P4). I really think that Intel is over-estimating their own reputation. They want, no, they require you to buy a new mobo, new case (or power supply, at least), and new RAM in order to get their new CPU up and running. I work for a network engineering company that resells CPUs (among other things, obviously) and, at today's retail pricing, you can buy a 1.2 GHz Athlon TBird, 128 MB PC133 RAM, and an ASUS A7V mobo for less than the price of the P4 1.4 GHz CPU alone. It's actually about 100 bucks less. Add that up. Then, look at the performance numbers. So far, Intel has lost all kinds of head-to-head tests with their 1.4 vs. AMDs 1.2 TBird. In fact, the TBird is only beaten in operations that exploit Intel-o-centric code. Unless you're a PhotoShop junkie, fuggetaboutit.
In fairness to Intel, the P4 is a long way from realising its full potential. One day, its architecture might be better exploited, etc. But, for now and the foreseeable future, even if I had all the money in the world, I would still buy a TBird.