Chris Beard said:OP did say this wasn't a fan boy post. I don't the OP wants to compare AMD and Intel, just his chip and the 6600.
I would use his chip (Opty 165 vs E6600) in the same context as comparing Intel and AMD chips. I don't believe in all the fanboy rubbish anyway.
Personally I don't really care which manufacturer of CPU I have in my system, just whichever offers the best performance which, in my opinion, is the Core 2 Duo chip at present.
To bolster this, I hasten to add that I have always had an AMD-based CPU in my system since the days of the Pentium II yet I would go for a Core 2 Duo over an Opty or A64 simply because of the performance difference, not because of manufacturer preference.
To digress, I would say that the E6600 would offer a substantial difference over the Opty 165 in games but not so much in 'normal' desktop applications.