> Of course, Intel's CPUs have [...] lessor upgrade path
One big + for AMD is their socket system, and keeping it the same for multiple generations via a roadmap so people can plan. Contrast that with intel, who comes up with a new socket every generation forcing you to buy a new motherboard and likely new ram if you want to upgrade. AMD's Socket AM4 was released in 2016 and works with Zen+, Zen 2, Zen 3 and Excavator microarchitectures. If you upgraded every 2 years, that's 3 motherboards and memory sets you would have had to purchase if you went with Intel vs a single motherboard/memory and upgrading only the cpu with AMD. That's quite a premium.
What? Aside from edge-cases resulting from slightly divergent microcode implementations you should not be dealing with that. They are both x86-64. (Forgive me if I am missing an elephant in the room.)
Of course, Intel's CPUs have less PCIE lanes, no ECC support, lessor upgrade path, generates more heat, etc.
Finally my old desktop was Intel and I am working on a lot of kernel/VM stuff. I don't want to switch architecture halfway. I did that before and it was painful.