AMD CPU vs. Intel CPU for Gaming

Quit trying to predict the future with Conroe & AM2, it's pointless. We still have tons of time to wait, which for the record is killing me.

Impact of CPU on Gaming

Just about using your GPU to its fullest potential with the help of the CPU.
-AMD Athlon 64 processors are at least 2.4GHz
-Intel processors clock in at least at the 3.2GHz

Hey, thanks for that link. Now I feel totally justified in buying my X2 3800 instead of the X2 4400 that I was thinking about.
Some games are more CPU dependent than others, but testing shows most of the popular games are more dependent on the video card.
These quotes (from the conclusions, next to last page of the link) pretty much say it all:

"... in Call of Duty 2 we didn’t find a lick of appreciable difference between the three Athlon 64 CPUs. ... We saw very little performance difference between the CPUs and we were able to play the game at the exact same quality settings with each video card on each CPU. Call of Duty 2 seems to be GPU limited even with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+.
Like Call of Duty 2 ,FEAR also showed very little real-world difference in CPU frequencies with the Athlon 64. On the high-end BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512 or the low-end BFGTech 6600 GT OC, there just simply wasn’t any noticeable difference in gameplay performance between an FX-60 or an X2 3800+."

So, what is the rationale for buying a $1,000 cpu? Bragging rights?

As long as the CPU doesn't bottleneck the gfx card the CPU won't be presured too much. The gfx card is the one used here mostly though decent CPUs are always welcomed.
AMD has the lead when it comes to games right now, but it is bound to loose it later in the year.