Suit yourself. I haven't done any looking, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were unable to find an nForce board with all of the following: 4+ USB, 1+ Firewire, 10/100/1000 ethernet. Granted, I'm not sure I've seen firewire and gigabit ethernet on any AMD board, but I'm a much bigger fan of features than performance.
I'd be hard pressed to care about 4-8%. I do a lot of video editing and encoding, and if I can do it at 32fps instead of my current 30, it saves a few minutes for something that gets idle priority and generally happens overnight. I guess the big deal is so much of a computer's time is spent idle that it just doesn't seem to pay. Then again, I guess the big deal is games, where 5% could judge playability. I just don't play anything pushing anymore. Maybe D3 or HL2 will change that. :)
All that said, 4-8% is a pretty impressive difference for two modern, leading chipsets. Like one of the anandtech articles said, performance crown has been made, it's down to price. If you read Anandtech, then you probably know at least as much as I do, so I'll quit harassing you. :D