The early days of the K8 were awesome, the FX would kill whatever Intel threw at AMD, it was brutal. Even cheap Athlons were better than highend Pentiums, and prescott? a disaster, plain and simple.
Is ironic that AMD hired Keller since Intel too found it's way out of the Netburst fiasco by going back to Tualatin, which at the same time had more in common with the good old Pentium Pro than it did with coppermine and katmai.