Yep and the i7950 is the evolution of core2duo architecture, that had been developed to counter the flop of P4 architecture, frankly really bad, against the Athlon architecture.
No we get at the same point that 10 years ago, with one manufacturer that lead with no competition and make no effort to release new architecture or instruction in their cpu.
So what AMD is doing now, it is what intel had done 10 years ago, hopefully for us.
So i repeat myself, having competitor do not only bring down the prices but also force the architecture to progress.
That's why i would not be so sure to get an intel cpu if AMD, like they said, build a de novo architecture that have nothing to do with the previous cpu, and if this one truly offer more performances that intel could offer now.
At same clock speed obviously.