what would you get out of these intel i5/i7 chips, the best allrounder in games programs etc etc, but id say majority of the time will be gaming ie MW2 and any other latest games, im kind of leaning towards the 860
If I was building a new computer today I'd go with the I7 860, Overall performance appears on par with the 920 for most applications, a little better than the I5 750, and better still than the PIIs. Here's one set of benchmarks,
I would buy none of the above processors. If I were building a system today without budget limits I would buy the Phenom II 945 Processor Model HDX945WFGIBOX.
I do not need more than a Phenom II 965 it does everything I need for it to. What can a I7920 do that a phenom 965 can not?? Granted in some video creation/ encoding times the Intel i7920 might shave 10min off what the phenom 965 would do but 20min vs 30min who cares unless you make a living doing it. I am not a fanboy of AMD but i really do not see why the majority of people need more than what AMD has to offer.
basically the i7 are quad core cpus but add hyperthreading and it adds 4 more virtual cores so you can do more in less time like run more programs blah blah blah more faster
If you can build an i5 system for the same price as a 965 system then I would go i5. I went AMD since it was the best price/performance at that time.
If you were really tight on your budget then you could get the Phenom II x2 550, MB, and 4gb ram and it would much much quicker than the 4200+. If you get the right MB you could unlock the 550 x2 into a x3 or x4 core cpu as well. I think that would be the cheapest route you could go and get very good performance for the money.