Building a computer

So I'm not that up to speed on building computers. Sure, I know what the different parts do, but I'm not sure which motherboards are good, where the current AMD v. Intel debate stands, and so forth, but if you're reading this you probably do. My brother wants to build a computer for college, and he's asking me (quite ungrammatically) for help. The only real stress test he'll be doing is gaming. So, here are my (his) questions:

What is a good price for a CPU?
AMD versus Intel?
Motherboards: here's the last email he sent me... it's interesting to see how far English has been degraded for online communication:

so the other mother board that supports intel is intel is that good or
bad like how do their products fair in comparrison to others? its
specs are 800/533MHz fsb, and as far as expansion slots it has
PCI-E x16 :1
PCI-E x1 :2
PCI Slots :4
So the two mother boards are as following (AMD then Intel with prices)
could you tell me which seems better for more specifics go to
newegg.com
ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVidia nforce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
Intel BoxD915PBLL Socket T(LGA 775) Intel 915P ATX Intel Motherboard thanks

If you can figure that out, advice will be paid for in wampum.