There's nothing new about vendors loading a computer with higher-performance peripherals for benchmarking purposes. I suppose if they really were concerned with this problem, the editors could have put the Cheetah in the Intel computer or the Barracuda 4LP in the AMD system, and rerun the tests. Instead, it was easier to complain about the inherent inequity in the test than try to do something about it. The end result is that the article implied AMD had been somewhat deceptive. Instances of computer manufacturers submitting computers with the highest performance peripherals available is common in the benchmarking industry.
Vendors know that high-performance peripherals can hide a multitude of bad designs.
Those that attempt to measure specific performance, such as raw compute power or bandwidth of specific subsystems. Those that are only intended for marketing purposes or to mislead and deceive. Both Sysmark and Winstone attempt to give you a measurement of overall system performance. Raw computing power only plays a minor role. Overall throughput is the metric of choice.