Neoseeker published a review on the Phenom 9900
was actually quite pleased with the performance of the Phenom 9900.Phenom 9900 Review
Given AMD's public commitment to fixing the TLB errata, and their move to 45nm with the "K10.5" architecture (Barcelona with some additional improvements) I suspect that AMD will be more competitive on the high end sometime next year.
But even until then... looking at the benchmarks, it did not seem like the Phenom 9900 was that far behind - if it was in fact behind at all.
