when i did my A+,the lecturer drilled it into us that amd is better than intel.
That amd is faster than intel. And i've only seen one built pc with an intel proc.
Myths, myths, and myths. Let's have our own little mythbusters show.

1 Amd is faster than intel. Untrue. I did a pc-wizard benchmark on our desktop pc. It proved that a HT'd P4 is almost as fast as an AMD 64x2.
intel chips are more OC'able than Amd procs. An extreme edition P4 got and 85% OC, and all the anmd chips were under 50%, according to maximum pc.

2 amd is better quality. Untrue. Intel chips last very long, and they respond well to overheating by slowing down.

however, amd is still cheaper than intel.

p.s., have you heard of amd's phenom chip? It was supposed to be quad-core, but one core was defective and had to be deactivated. The phenom is now being sold as tri-core.

It depends upon how you look at it . i say intel is better for, their new 45nm process, the hafnium technology.

Yeah, I'm not really sure I do anything where I would notice a significant difference. I typically put AMD processors in my own computers and also in computers I build for people unless they specifically ask for an Intel.

Wow, your instructor is behind the times.  I am a big AMD fan but they have fallen behind big time.  For a while AMD and ATI  were the ones taking on the Intel and Nvidia. I guess those giants got sick of getting their butts kicked and responded with some amazing technology.  Without a question Intel is now the one.  If you really want to know who is ahead, check out places like Voodoo or Falcon computers or tom's hardware. 

As a side note, I have often thought I could make some money in the stock market by buying Intel or Amd at the right moment. When one gets the edge that is. Its so easy to trace by checking out what gaming computers use.  For a long time Intel was doing well, but their idea of 30 pipes in a cpu got old even thought they felt it would pay off in the future. Mean while AMD with their 9 pipes but a larger on board cache really helped with speed.  On board cache is everything when it comes to cpu speed.  I was amazed how the speed increased in even simple apps when I moved from a 512 cache to a 1mb cache.  And now thats old!

I wouldn't play with the stock of either of these guys.  The CPU business is becoming very low margin.  They are both trying so hard to knock each other out of the game that they are sacrificing profit for market share.  In addition, in the near future they are going to get killed by the cost of materials. (solar companies use the same stuff to build their panels that AMD and Intel use to make chips)  Until someone comes up with a truly next generation architecture that changes the entire market these two will both have a touch path ahead.  Well, unless they try to move into different markets which is what Intel is hinting that they are going to do.  In the last couple of weeks they've announced that they are expanding even further into low power mobile devices and just today they announced that hey are moving into producing solid state hard drives.  Think about it, they would have no reason in the world to be building new business models if their current structure was churning out cash like it used to.

Yeah tieing in the Gpu into cracking efforts works damn well for brute forcing and whatnot.   Back to AMD vs Intel though, pseud0 has it I would say.  AMD used to be top dog, Intel is on the top of the heap really now... but as far as the future who really knows.  It's all a butt load of propaganda by both sides.  For me?  I went AMD since the chip I got does more than enough for what I needed... gaming and 'business' wise, and it was a good bit cheaper than Intel.  Also, the whoopass Radeon card in my laptop with 512 RAM is just... Mmmmm... Finding drivers for it in Linux... was.... hellish though.