Ga.???
What part?
As you can see from the reference wombat made a lot of these AMD/Intel debates wind up being fruitless blow outs. If it's kept civil and clean I won't bother you or the other posters. But if it gets out of hand I'll slam the door on it and quick.
Now as for the cpu I like. My choice is Intel. I have a 2.4 that for my purpose does the job rather well. I like how forgiving the cpu chip is for tempature abuse. I do beta testing and a lot of custom case construction. The built in self defence sensor prevents the chip from burning it self up. Pretty handy if you're not sure how a case design is going to work out. As for proformance doing real work, I get what I want from it. I've had many windows open running different programs and had the cable tv going on the system in the background. It got a tad bit warm but nothing to get excited about.
Now as for your dad's 1.5. I had a 1.6 before and never had a problem. What is being run on his when it freezes up?