Hey Ian - the AMD / ATi combo still returns better performance per dollar than Intel / nVidia - OUTSIDE of FSX. Regardless, I reckon its a good idea to "fight the power" for those who aren't focused on FSX and support AMD / ATi, otherwise Intel / nVidia will stop innovating. The main reason we've got good choice / power these days is because AMD / ATi have kept nipping at the heels of the oligarchy. And there's certainly plenty of instances where an AMD CPU is better than an equivalent Intel, or an ATi (now all AMD) video card is better than an nVidia. And then there's drivers, with nVidia having had quite a run of massively bloated crappy drivers - of course this comes and goes with both platforms, but over the 15-odd years of using both, I've seen more awful nVidia drivers than I've seen ATi.
But as already agreed, if one's main / sole focus is FSX, and one is prepared to pay, there really is no choice other than to go Intel / nVidia (that's MS doing an "Apple-lock-in" thing on us - great...)
For most FPS gamers, if you asked them "Do you want 40 FPS for $500, or 45 FPS for $600?" - it's an easy choice unless one simply has to have the best for bragging rights...

Also the combo of CPU / Video card has the motherboard coming into play, and the AMD ones are usually cheaper for a comparable setup. And having seen / worked on hundreds of systems over then last 9-odd years of being in business for myself, I can say with surety that AMD systems just "feel" peppier than their Intel counterparts in a general sense. I would agree with you that some of the early AMD CPUs were certainly lacking - if your last experience was 1998, that's the dark ages!

Once the socket 754 CPUs came along - some of the Semprons withstanding (they were sometimes worse than those nasty Celerons) - AMD generally went ahead in leaps and bounds. ATi had a good run with pretty much all of their cards once they hit the Radeon series.
Funny to write this - there was a time, around '98 - '99, that I wouldn't touch AMD / ATi. Then I used a system with that combo and realised how over-priced and under-powered (relatively speaking) the Intel / nVidia deal was...
