I don't know too much about processors either but I tried to google it before I bought mine:
I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ 2.8ghz. So the one below yours, and I picked mine over a Intel too. In your case, in pure processing speed, the AMD is a fair bit better than the Intel. When I was researching on google before I bought mine, It said that my AMD in particular was better at all types of computing tasks, except gaming, than Intel. So that's why I chose my AMD, despite being a gamer. I don't plan on playing Crysis with full specs, and so a processor of this calibre can cope with most high end games fairly well. (on top of having a £200 gfx card =D).
But like I said, I'm no processor expert =p and I just found this (was the first page on google haha) http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
And it seems that the Processors you are comparing, the Intel is better. So yeah...the choice is yours =p.
Just stumbled across this too : http://www.hardcoreware.net/re.....-362-1.htm
It's directly linked to you, aso just flick through and look at the charts (at least that's what I did).
And I take that back about Crysis, my AMD seemed to perform well on the gaming test =pp.