InsideHW.com has compared AMD and Intel CPUs for around 60 Euro (90 USD)

Out-of-the-box the best CPU among these is Athlon II X3 since it offers three cores, which is definitely maximum raw power in this group. In applications that do know how to harness that CPU power Athlon X3 will be, obviously, the best. Intel CPUs are faster in Photoshop test since most of filters used are single-core, so more cores have minimal impact on performances. When it comes to gaming, the situation is pretty much in balance among all tested CPUs. Archiving, rendering and video compression are similar among dual core CPUs, but since these applications can put to good use more cores, X3 comes as clear winner. When it comes to virtualization all CPUs are similar except, again, Athlon II X3 which does offer three cores, which means that one can be used for virtualization and user can continue working with the rest two cores. In case of dual core CPUs, you will be left with “only” one core.

It is obvious that in this group AMD Athlon II X3 435 offers most bang for buck. InsideHW Best Buy Award is well deserved. Of course, if you need a configuration that will be used in Photoshop most of time, any Intel CPU of these two can be also very good choice. Another advantage of AMD CPUs is the fact that you can upgrade CPUs without changing motherboard, memory and cooler, while in case of Intel we have three LGA sockets at this moment on the market, which makes future upgrades little bit complicated business.