We have 3 PCs, 2 AMD and 1 Intel I am working on AMD for last more than 3 years, regarding heat, I have never faced any trouble so far, never crashed. For your info. I had worked in a condition for more than 3 months where room temperature was more than 38 C in summer, PC was on from 5.00 am to till midnight/2.00 am, never faced any problem. Yes sometime my PC was running slow so I added a new cooling fan + 265 RAM. Also still the machine is working fine at the more or less same condition. Configuration: AMD Athlon 2000+ 1.667 GHz, Asrock motherboard, 128+256 RAM. Right now working on AMD 4000+ Dual core, 2.1 GHz, 1 GB RAM for more than 8 months,never faced any problem. Today I switched on my PC around 5.00 am, now 11.38 PM, you may look at the screenshot to see present temp. I feel AMD is much more faster than Intel
If you're thinking of something that would take place of Intel P4, go ahead buy an AMD. But when it comes to Core 2 Duos, AMD is not even in the race. So I would advice against buying an AMD.
Man, please read computer magazine. My AMD Agena X4 Phenom 9500 2,2 Ghz is a quadcore. 2 x faster than dual core.