One of the reasons developers tend to develop on Intel machines is that Intel optimizations are available on Intel CPU's before they are available on any others (of course), and developers are naturally going to want to write code to take advantage of these technologies for the speed gains available.
That being said, I am fairly intimate with this side of the business, as some of you may know, and routinely use several different Windows boxes. I am speaking of current technology, not historical technology. In my experience, there is little or no difference in the reliability of current AMD-Asus combos compared to Intel-Intel.
If we put aside the reliability debate, we are left with essentially two factors that may play into a purchase decision, and those are performance and cost.
Once again, Intel optimizations are a big deal here. New code is going to be written to take advantage of the latest optimizations available. In many cases, developers pass their DSP intensive code to Intel engineers, who then make suggestions on how to better utilize Intel optimizations. IF you are using newer software, and if that software is written to use the very latest Intel optimizations, you will realize a performance gain over the AMD option.
That being said, there are many factors which may cause your favorite software to NOT take advantage of the very latest intel optimizations, in which case, cycle per cycle, the AMD product beats the Intel one on pretty much every level (except perhaps in the case where hyperthreading is advantageous to the process at hand).
As for cost, we are all very familiar with the advantages of AMD.
Really, the reliability problems of AMD machines has little to do with AMD and much to do with OUTDATED motherboards. For someone considering what to buy today, reliability should not enter into the equation. Get a good Asus MB (there are others that are good) with an AMD64 processor, or get and Intel/Intel combo, and you'll see no difference in reliability. You will see a difference in performance/cost, and that's a difference I suspect you'll like.