I spent about a month pondering the same question..AMD or Intel.....I went through dozens or forums, sh!tloads of reviews, and anywhere else I could get facts and/or opinions of cpu,mobo, ram, ect... Not knowing much about AMD before hand, I gathered this:
AMD makes good CPU's, they have great performance, more performance clock for clock than Intel, several chipsets to support them, they are O/Cable. They run a little hot at stock speeds, they are hot like the sun when O/Ced, extreme cooling will be needed. Some popular chipsets are bugy, some experience random BSODs and reboots(chipsets or cpu related unknown)
Intel also makes good CPUs, they also perform well, but not as good as a similar clocked AMD. Intel has a slew of chipsets and a few from other makers, the Northwoods are EXTREME overclockers. They run cool at very high clocks with stock HSF. Intel's product testing is awesome, reassuring. They are pretty damn expensive, and until recently RAMBUS to go along was also expensive.
I went with Intel, got a 1.6A, run it at 2.5Ghz, got DDR, kept stock cooling, got cpu for $140. Very happy
It's 7 in the morning, half asleep, so forgive the gramar.