> AMD has always played 2nd fiddle to Intel and it is hard to shake that perception.

I don't know where you got that perception. Perhaps you're a kid fresh out of highschool and are oblivious to AMD's history, but AMD's Athlon line outperformed Intel's offering of the time by a wide margin, namely their Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV and Pentium D lines.

IIRC, Intel only started to become competitive with AMD with the introduction of their Core 2 line.