Best bang for your dollar is to wait for Skylake if you're going Intel.
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So the PS4 is less than a month away. Two games were pushed back till early 2014. I'm hyped for Killzone: Shadowfall and The Order. Maybe they'll bring Beyond to the PS4. I didn't purchase it on the PS3 since they may bring it to the PS4.
that is what thay said about haswell
Intel never was bang for your dollar (especially not for gaming)
Intel is a beast. Haswell is a behemoth in my opinion. Cost efficient, significantly less heat and power consumption and extremely RIDICULOUSLY fast compared to AMD's processors. No idea what you're complaining about. Go check out the reviews and benchmarks.
Skylake is a whole different story. I am wondering when will they move on from the Core i generation. They're stuck on the 22 nm since the transition to 14 nm proved to be very difficult. They're getting there from their last announcement few weeks ago though, while AMD is still ... at what again?
The original Nehalem was bang for my € at least. my core i7-920 processor still lasts, and is not reaching it's limits yet, even though it's at the stock speed of 2.67 GHz. Although I don't encode, so I probably don't count, do I? I only game CPU intensive games (EU4+PCSX2 simultaneously for example) and it does that perfectly.
The update adds background music player Oo, for some games that's a necessesity in the long run (I'm not talking about Eternal sonata, here, it's going more in the direction of Disgaea)
I would love to have your processor. That should have been my processor if I waited few more months before it came out. Honestly, any i7 upgrade will last you generations.
While it is true you don't need an i7 to play games. An i5 is more than enough, even the 5% (or less) margin for games is not sufficient to blow another 100 USD for an i7. What people don't tell you is how many threads and % of CPU usage between the two.

So far I've hit about 25-33% at the highest settings for Crysis 3 and Metro 2033 for my Haswell i7 stock-speed. An i5 would require more processing power to achieve the same quality which requires
more energy + heat.
On topic, I've been purchasing those 5 dollar meals from Tacobell and trying to win a PS4. I want another one.