A lot of my friends went intel back in '03 and I went AMD (Athlon 64) but now is now, I went AMD at first and got the 980 BE for this gen, and recently went Intel and got a 2600k. I can't say that AMD is better but I also can't say that Intel eats AMD up in terms of performance, unless you're going to compare the 3960x against the Phenom 9xx, AMD's do fine if they don't bottleneck you. So if you're on a budget, going AMD is not a bad thing, just make sure to pick up a Phenom 2 now if you're gonna build, the are discontinued and I believe the Phenom 2 is one of AMD's best CPUs. Not to say that the FX series is bad but if you're spending that much just go intel, no point in getting the good FX series when you can get a 2500k, unless you have a specific reason to get 8 cores.
I like both companies equally, and both have strengths and weaknesses like, Intel will be the fastest this gen and AMD will be fast but are more affordable, and remember not all people need the best of the best.