I recently helped a friend build a new gaming pc/home server. Didn't have long to research it but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Up to now, I had given up on Intel and had been going the Nvidia and AMD route. However, I'm dead impressed with the Intel Core 2 Duo - very fast and efficient. You just have to read the articles on Toms Hardware and Anandtech. What sold me though was reading how successful people have been with overclocking just the lowly E6300 by over 50% and beating even the top of the range AMD chip.
So...