I use an AMD but as SPOT has said in another forum, he and Earle Foote recommend Intel. If I were to buy another I would go with their recommendations, even though my Athlon runs fine. They both have a tremendous amount of experience with many different setups. AMD always looks good for price and that's why I bought it, but when the experts talk I listen!

Intel less onboard Video card.
I use 845 PE works well with Vegas

I have a AMD system, Althlon XP 2400, 1GB DDR Ram, and it has worked great for me with Vegas 3 and now Vegas 4, I would definateely reccomend it as a somewhat cheaper alternative (comapred to P4) for people that are looking to build or buy a system to run Vegas on. As long as you have good cooling fans, your processor and system will remain cool enough and won't overheat during long renders. I've never had an overheat or any problems with it.

I think the general consensus is that you get better value going with AMD when building a general-purpose system, because AMD chips are intentionally priced below equivalent Intel chips. On some video rendering tests, however, code optimised for the P4 will do a bit better on P4 systems. Cooling issues are no longer relevant for either processor as long as normal guidelines specified by AMD and Intel are followed.

I use AMD exclusively, partly because I want them to succeed. Without them as serious competition for Intel we would have been paying $3,000 for fast processors rather than $300.

Yes, that is a very good point.

I have used both, and I'd recomend AMD, only because of the price. You could spend,say, $500 on the latest intel chip, and $400 on the latest AMD, and the rendering difference will be in seconds. So, if seconds are work the price difference, go with Intel. Of course you should get the 333mhz bus AMD processors if you can afford, and the mb/ram to back it up. Just make sure you get a good cooling fan/etc for eigther. They do make fan-less power supply's now too, which would cut down on sound (and increase the price). DDR is your best bet too: much better then SDRAM and cheaper them RAMBUS RAM.

The only advantage Intel cpu's have over AMD's. at the moment, are faster rendering times for Intel-probably about 30%+ if we're talking about comparable speed chips. So if rendering time is really important to you, and you don't mind paying a generally higher price premium, go with Intel. The noise and heat factors apply to both manufacturers products. They're pushing a lot of energy thru a really tiny area, and that =heat, which leads to noise caused by the fans to cool them off. I've used nothing but AMD boxes for the past few years, and they've performed great, but might consider Intel in the future if their prices ever come down from the stratosphere-(think their 3.0+ghz chip still runs around $600, v.s. maybe $250 for a comparable speed AMD offering)...