Mikelou: You seem to be a person with few words and few facts. Although Intel does perform slightly better clock for clock, the difference between them are almost unnoticable. If you look at the benchmarks for both Quake and UT, both are within each other +5/-5 FPS, which has LITTLE advantage. One thing that those benchmarks don't test are, non-game performance 3D Rendering FPU-crunching applications such as 3D Studio Max 3.0 or SPECviewperf. In those benchmarks, the Athlon Tbird makes a huge difference blowing away the P3 whereas the Intel 1Ghz never loses the Tbird far behind. What really BLOWS away the INTEL is the price. At less than 2% difference in performance and more than 20% gain in some 3D applications(3DSMAX) its already a good processor, and at only 55% the cost($252 on Pricewatch) of the P3 1Ghz($454), it just doesn't make sense to purchase the Intel.
Many unexperienced hardware users "think" that the VIA chipset isn't as stable, which is infact untrue! If you look at the products that VIA produces, they make chipsets for both platforms; Intel and AMD with motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS, MSI, and Abit using their technology. Infact, a few months ago many of the overclockers where raving about the Asus P3V4X which is a VIA chipset P3 platform Slot 1 board. To say that VIA is unstable, is very incorrect.