The issue of Intel vs AMD is a little more convoluted than it appears.
If your not very experienced in installing cpu's into motherboards, you can fry an AMD chip in 5 seconds--just high center the fan or forget to plug in the fan.
Another issue is heat dissapation--Intel wins there
Here is a link and a quote:
http://www.portatech.com/faq.asp?ID=13
"Intel CPUs for example run at a dramatically lower temperature which allows Intel to permently fix a thick aluminum protective plate over the cpu core. This protective plate virtually eliminates the possiblility of damaging the CPU core during installation. Based on our experience the lower operating temperature on The Intel CPU also virtually eliminates the possiblility of overheating the CPU with anything other than a complete failure of the fan"
In my opinion, both are perfectly good to use if properly installed. The trouble is, thats not real life. Both of these processors have an operating envelope. Its kind of like racing a Ford Mustang against a BMW. The Ford can win, but it has to push the envelope to its limits.