I recommend the new Haswell either being the I7 or i5 K series. Wait till they launch and then buy the i7 if you can afford it, or if not go for the i5k. If you do not go with Haswell which is the safest and most future proof, again go with either he i7-3770k or the i5-3570k. A lot of video games make use of extra cores now, but not the hyper threaded cores as much, and after a point I am not sure if they bother with extra cores. Once you gt to a quad core at the moment, core clock will make a bigger difference than hyper-threading for gaming. The i5-3570k has been able to overclock as high as 4.7 or 4.8 ghz by some, which is higher than any i7 except the i7-3770k, because you can overclock it as well.