the pentium d's (even the 9's) can only beat the x2's on video encoding and stuff. hardcore tasks.
I think you are forgetting how big Intel is as well. They can afford to subsidise their Conroes considerably more than AMD could ever do with their X2s. They are killing off most processors, with the P4 6 series (2MB cache) being relegated to entry level - their price for the 661 (3.6ghz) are being slashed from $400 to $183.
You can already get a Celeron for £25, and even if Celerons are unusably crap, that is cheap.
On top of that the Conroes are being sold underclocked. The 2.6ghz part can reach 4.6ghz with light water cooling. AMD are still trying to wring more from their 90nm process as well, and I think that we will not see any X2s going far beyond 3.4ghz. Possibly 3.6ghz.
The new socket AM2 has made bugger all difference to be frank, though they do now have a new chipset (nvidia 5) and there is 10gb/s possible memory bandwidth due to the ddr-2 memory capability.
The K8L (updated athlon) is not going to be introduced until the end of the year, and unless AMD can pull that forward they are going to be steamrollered by intel for the next 4- 5 months, and even then apparently the K8L will still not be good enough to take the 'performance crown'.
heh. sorry that was so lengthy