BOTH Intel's Montevina and AMD's Puma mobile platforms have been a bit late to come out, but their features quickly changed the shape of the notebooks shipping during the summer break. Both got updated memory (and FSB for Intel), an integrated 3D graphics boost, smooth HD video handling in all formats, 802.n wireless and more.
Intel's camp is still decisively faster on the CPU front, with 25 per cent clock advantage on the dual core front as Core 2 mobile Penryn exceeds 3GHz right now, not to mention the 2.5GHz quad-core parts coming out real soon now.
They also support DDR3-1066 memory, however its real benefit here is more power saving than performance, as these aren't really low latency parts - Kingston has, for instance, mobile DDR2-800 CL4 (in SPD!) DIMMs that bring speed benefits to both Intel and AMD notebook CPUs. These might end up faster overall than most DDR3-1066 CL7 modules at lower price.
Keep in mind, though, that even if the FSB can't use it, the dual channel fast memory is useful if having integrated graphics to share it with.
I had a quick look at two competing entries here for some old fashioned low level benchmark fun - both being Acer Aspire offering, fortunately or not (those using the Aspires will know why I say that). The Intel flavour ran on a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo, while the AMD one used 2 GHz Turion64 Ultra. The AMD machine ran Nvidia mobile GeForce 9100 graphics instead of the AMD 790G chipset, so I didn't focus on comparing the graphics here. Both systems had 4 GB RAM in two DIMMs - 3 GB only visible for Vista32. Here are the comparative benchmark results:
Sandra 2009
AMD
CPU int 11418 MIPS
CPU fp 12008 MFLOPS
Multimedia int 23.82 MPixel/s
Multimedia fp 13.79 MPixel/s
Inter-Core Bandwidth 1.77 GB/s
Inter-Core Latency 176 ns
ALU Power Performance at 25 fps 2529 MIPS
Int Buff'd iSSE2 Memory Bandwidth 5.96 GB/s
Float Buff'd iSSE2 Memory Bandwidth 6.12 GB/s
Memory (Random Access) Latency 151 ns
Intel
CPU int 12491 MIPS
CPU fp 11758 MFLOPS
Multimedia int 28.68 MPixel/s
Multimedia fp 16.50 MPixel/s
Inter-Core Bandwidth 4.98 GB/s
Inter-Core Latency 85 ns
ALU Power Performance at 25 fps 4910 MIPS
Int Buff'd iSSE2 Memory Bandwidth 5.50 GB/s
Float Buff'd iSSE2 Memory Bandwidth 5.49 GB/s
Memory (Random Access) Latency 96 ns
PCmark Vantage - Montevina Score 3131
As you can see, the Intel machine still pulls ahead somewhat in the performance race on the CPU side. The difference is not that much to outclass the competitor though: probably it will be the quad-core Montevina with low-latency DDR3 memory to do that deed. Both are pretty zippy systems with nearly instant response even in Vista - not for 3-D games though.
Graphics wise, whether using the AMD or Nvidia chipsets, Turion64 Ultra systems lead against the GM45 chipset. Just like AMD has to fix its CPUs, so Intel has to improve the integrated graphics - the only problem is that latter is supposedly far easier and less painful for the corporate pocket.
Feature-wise, the systems are very similar, even the chipset capabilities are quite on a par. Yeah, Intel's WiFi solution is its own while AMD has opened that part of the market - but overall, pretty similar stuff.
In summary, neither platform is a wrong choice - the performance differences are there, but your own fanboy club or vendor preferences might decide the buy, at the end.