What is the best gaming CPU for the price ?

I plan on building a high-end PC basically for gaming. I've decided that I would build it revolving around what CPU I chose. For a limit of roughly 200.00$ and under, what would my best bet be. I consulted the CPU charts for Crysis but I figured I'd ask anyways. Thanks.

Phenom II X3 720BE is one of the best price/performance processors around right now. Phenom II X4 940 is offering good price/performance as well if you don't mind sticking with DDR2 memory. I'll let someone else make Intel recommendations as I'm not as familiar with them.

One quick note, Intel does quarterly price adjustments and next week they're officially releasing new processors (i7 950, some folks already have them). They usually do a price adjustment simultaneously so if you wait till next week to order you may shave a few dollars off the cost of the rig.

The e8500 will probably give you the best performance, but you won't be able to really upgrade the system much. Since Intel is going all schizo over its chip interfaces, I'd give up a little performance and swing the Athlon route with an AM3 motherboard in order to avoid having to swap out motherboards on the next processor upgrade. I'd grab a phenom x3 720 (well really I'd personally go for the phenom x4 945 but it's $225 thought that may change in a week or two as AMD responds to intels cuts)

That is unless, you don't mind clocking the e8500 to 3.6-4ghz

ETA: don't forget you can try to unlock the extra core on the Phenom x3 720

will the prices of the i7 920 fall with the release of the 950?

Go for a Ph2 940. It may not kick the ass of the e8500 now, but it will when more quad-threaded games come out. Just look at GTAIV benchmarks.

the Q6600 is a brilliant CPU and a monster OCer