Look, it comes to down to how much money you want to spend really. AMD is cheaper, you can get a AMD FX8350 8-Core Black Series right now for $170 (orig. $300 or more). Intel is more expensive for the comparable CPU, but Intel's IPC is faster within their cores so they don't use as many cores as you will notice the new gen Intel CPUs are all mainly 4 cores but due to their tech they break the 4 cores into 8 so their CPUs are more efficient. When it comes to heat that would come down to the quality of your heat sink and thermal compound that was used when the CPU was applied to the heat sink, and of course how many fans your case has and the settings your BIOS has for the RPMs of the fans to run at depending on what temps. your CPU is currently at. I have never heard of one or another CPU brand getting hotter then another. AND YES multiple cores DO matter for next-gen/new games, as they are currently starting to phase out Dual Core CPUs all together when it comes to the game requirements, take FC4 and DA-Inquisition for example. The multiple cores help spread out the pay load of the processing power it takes to run these new gen games. Hope that helps, take care.