I've heard they don't OC as well, but how well do they compare to other more OC oriented motherboards, is the difference large, also, in what other ways do they differ?
Are you talking about actual stock Intel motherboards or just intel chipset based motherboards?
Intel motherboards are pretty solid but I don't believe they support overclocking on them aside from a few select models. And for reference, I consider an intel board like a reference video card. That's the basic and solid design.
As for chipsets... depends on what you get I suppose.