I do a bit of gaming and love AMD's. They run my programs for school quite well, too (MATLAB, Mathematica, AutoCAD). The only thing you might want to do is make sure you have extra cooling capability. A single case fan might not do the job - use 2 at a minimum. As far as dual core processors, I believe that it's basically a wash between AMD and Intel. The only difference (I beleive) is the AMD's are 64 bit whereas the Intels are still 32. (Someone please correct me on this if I'm wrong...)
yea its bette not to give advise if your not sure.
In this case the Intel Core2Duo BLOWS AMD's X2 and FX out of the water... and Intel is also 64bit :\