The best on the market have been around awhile, amd hasn't really released anything new in years. It may be a matter of opinion but I'd venture to say the am3+ and either an fx-6350 or fx 8350. You'll probably want a decent cooler and be somewhat picky about which motherboard you use for the fx 8350 especially. Not all am3+ boards are the same and many lack proper power phases or vrm cooling to handle the 8 core cpu's.
The 6350 is almost identical to the 8350 in most games, only a few get slightly more benefit from the 2 extra threads of the 8350. Overclocking is suggested to help make up for the comparatively weaker ipc performance (per core performance) of amd's cpu's.
Zen is supposed to be released at the end of the year though no telling if it will actually release on time or what sort of actual performance will come from them. Amd's pretty optimistic but more than once companies have been too optimistic about their speculated performance compared to the real world results so all we can do is wait and see. Zen will also be on a new platform, am4.
Amd are priced slightly better but when comparing performance to intel the pricing is actually similar. Processors can't really be compared by core count or speed (ghz) from one to the other. The i3 like a 4th gen 4170 or 6th gen 6100 cost about the same as an fx 6350 and a little cheaper than the fx 8350 and gaming performance is similar. The fx 8350 oc'd may do just a hair better but costs a good $50+ more than the i3 by the time you factor in a decent motherboard and cooler for overclocking the amd.
An i5 6500 runs games better than either amd cpu and only runs around $20-30 more than the fx 8350. Intel's stronger ipc tends to perform better in games (as well as many other tasks), higher min fps in games which translates to smoother gameplay. Not that amd are terrible but they've been running the same old processor for years without much improvement while intel has made steady (albeit somewhat slow) advancements.
2nd and 3rd gen intel cpu's were keeping pace with or passing what amd currently has to offer and since then intel has released 4th, 5th and 6th gen cpu's which all have slightly improved performance. While amd stays where they've been the past several years intel's chips continue to slowly pull further ahead.
Dx12 is supposed to reduce the overhead placed on cpu's and improve gaming all the way around, more noticeably on the weaker cpu's which is a boost for amd's current cpu's. There really aren't any dx12 games though.
For now with dx11 being the majority of games, the slightly higher driver overhead is handled a bit easier on stronger intel cpu's which improves gaming performance. Less likelihood of the gpu being bottlenecked. Though it also depends on the individual game, how well it's optimized/coded, whether or not it's cpu heavy or not. Some games show huge improvements by a stronger cpu, others show very little difference between an i3, fx 6350/8350, i5 or i7.
It comes down to personal preference but the cpu's really are pretty well priced according to performance. Amd being a huge bargain is more of a myth since it's really not that much cheaper for the performance they provide vs intel. Amd does have really inexpensive motherboards but they're typically not a good buy. They have weak vrm, low count power phases and tend to cause issues like cpu throttling even with the cpu itself not overheating. You end up getting what you pay for to some extent. By the time you get a solid motherboard for say an 8350 it's around the same price as a decent motherboard for an i5.
The only amd cpu's I'd go so far as to say maybe avoid are the fx 9xxx. They're factory overclocked fx 8xxx cpu's and can be difficult to keep cool without water cooling, tend to have far more stability issues even with high end higher cost am3+ boards. Not to mention the high tdp and higher power consumption.
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