amd or intel?

I am intel celeron 333mhz user.., I recently decided to buy a new
computer.
The system is most propably going to be used to run a linux version
and do
some serious programming. May be a little bit of games, movies.. and
multimedia
can also be thoght of in the Things-to-do list. I was thinking of
buying
an AMD64 3ghz based computer. But my friends are advicing me to go for
an Intel
pentium 2.8 HT system. They argue that AMD is unreliable and
overheating of the cpu is
very common. They said that for saving money i must not compramise on
reliablity and performance in the long run.
What should i buy: an intel based system or an AMD?