Hello,
Some time back there was a discussion on which board processor combination would be good for a workstation. My own machine has been down since many days. One day everything was fine with my dual boot Intel 845 GEBV2 system and I decided to install SP3 in my XP just for kicks. It was downloaded properly from the doze update website and after a few minutes, it started restarting my comp. The worst part was that my mobo got damaged and the HDD controller is giving trouble. Live CDs run fine but even clean installation of doze gives blue screen errors and linux gives hard disk read/write errors midway during installation. It is time for me to go for a new board.
I would still go with Intel processors and Intel chipset boards (Not Intel Original Boards). AMD may be good technically but their support in India is not so good. Even simple crosschecking of processors or motherboards is difficult as most repairers have Intel based products. In my experience I have observed that higher end AMD products have better quality and life compared to the low end ones. I have had 2 processor failures in limitted quantities of AMD whereas Intel processors have been quite robust. Another thing one should avoid is Asus motherboards with nVidia chipsets. They are not very stable and solid.