You might consider that in the BIY arena for a desktop.

Recently spent a better part of a day putting together a estimate for a friend.

He wanted to see everything from a Single Processor quad core AMD, Dual Processor Quad core AMD (and 6 core versions) with upto 4 Video Cards and lotsa storage.

And Intel Processor versions.

By and Large the AMD versions were 20-30% cheaper for equivalent hardware specs (1-2 ticks off fastest available)

Egads Dual Processor Quad Core Intel machines... do you want a second job with that loan?

Intel Xeon X5550 Nehalem 2.66Ghz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 95W Quad-Core, with 12GB memory and 2 dual DVI video cards, 2 - 2TB Drive, DVD-RW DL, Nice case etc... $3699

AMD Opteron 2382 Shanghai 2.6Ghz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket F 75W Quad-Core, with 16GB memory and 2 dual DVI video cards, 2 - 2TB Drive, DVD-RW DL, Nice case etc... $2225

Of course these were back in December. but prices have not really come down since then.