I'v ebeen a die-hard Intel fan since 1997 and just a month ago, I switched over to AMD. I feel I've been wasting much of my precious time over Intel. Not that its a poor processor, but becuz, AMD is so far the best. As for the heat and noise problems, anyone who's got a doubt and a little common sense better check out the heat sinks/fans of both, a box-packed Intel Pentium4 530 (3.0GHz) and an AMD 939 socket processor-in-a-box. Rest I leave it to his imagination. Secondly, Intel has been very fond of offering small increments to the clock speeds in its processors like 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz, 3.2GHz blah blah blah. Well, the fact is, that one doesn't notice even the slightest impact between them. Though pretty late, yet, Intel has now realized that increasing mere clock speed doesn't mean actual performance boost and thats why its switched over to processor model numbers too. The best part is, in the technological race, AMD is at par with Intel if not superior (which it is), but AMD users despite receiving latest tech advancement, dont get obsoleted so fast as Intel users. Why?? Well, on one hand buy an AMD socket 939 board and on the other hand, buy a board with Intel 915/925 Series chipsets. You dont have to buy another mobo for an advanced processor. But with Intel you feel like changing your PC or upgrading it after a year.
I never wanted to adopt AMD but since the day I have used one, I dont think I'll ever revert back to Intel.