OP
As you can see people have differing opinions about AMD, Intel and etc. It comes down to what is your budget, what your system is going to do and where you are willing to make compromises.
If we all were rich and had money burning a hole in our pockets then Intel, baby, Intel the whole way. But some of us have a tight to very tight budget and are willing to compromise to get the best bang for our buck performance.
Generally speaking for a gaming system, you want to spend more on the graphics than maybe the m/b or cpu. Now if you look at reviews of various chips in your budget range, most likely you are looking to spend around $100 or less on a cpu, around $100 or less on a m/b and about $100-150 on graphics. Unfortunately, if that is to much for your budget than an APU from AMD should be able to get your foot in the door. An APU for about ~$100-130 plus a m/b for ~$80-$125 is workable for an entry level gaming system.
One way to go is to purchase the AMD Athlon X4 750K Trinity 3.4GHz Socket FM2 100W this an APU that the IGP has been disabled and on NE costs about $90, get a mid-range m/b (FM2A75) ~$60-80, and a 7770 graphics card for~$90-140. This would be a fairly balanced budget gaming system. If you want to o/c the cpu then you would need faster memory 8 Gigs of 1866 speed for around ~$70-90.
Of course, if you live near a Microcenter, which has some really great combo deals with cpu and m/b. Unfortunately they don't seem to carry the 750K. Just some food for thought.