Is an i5 even viable anymore now that there is Ryzen?

Sure is. If you intend to overclock that is.
Otherwise Ryzen is easily the superior option from a price/performance/power perspective.

However... Some people will go with a brand regardless of how badly it stacks up to the competition.

Don't do it. The i5 CPUs are a dead end. No room for multitasking and a trend of worsening frame times and 1% / 0.1% lows on newer titles.

The 4 cores / 4 threads design is likely to become the i3 CPUs next year on 10 nm, by the way.

Viable, yes. But the question is how long will it be. I'm pretty sure that by the end of the month the i5 will start trailing behind Ryzen 5 chips in games because it's limited to 4 threads only. And that's leaving out the frametimes which already are getting worse on a i5 despite having nominally higher frame counts.

In any case, now that Ryzen is out, I wouldn't buy an i5 anymore. I hope for Intel that by Ice lake they've learned and will bring 4c/8t i5 chips, with i7 covering 6-8 cores and i9 anything above that.

They are fine. The Quad-Core i7's aren't exactly 100x better.

The i5's are here to stay and still have years of life left in them.
i7 vs i5: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1828?vs=1826
Note the i7's 400mhz~ clock advantage.

So, lets compare the faster 200mhz~ clocked i5.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1828?vs=1832

As you can see, not massive differences.

If you can save $100-$200 by dropping down to an i5 which allows you to get a better GPU... Then do it. The GPU is more important to gaming than the difference between an i5 and i7's Hyperthreading, cache and clock rate.

If you get a Ryzen Hex/Octo chip, then it will win in heavily threaded scenario's. No Question.
A heavily overclocked i5 however will beat Ryzen in anything that uses up to 4~ threads, which is pretty much every video game.

Ryzen should win over the long term as the future is Multi-threaded. But chances are you will probably upgrade by the time an i5 is regarded as useless for gaming for most users.

With that, the Core 2 Quads have managed to stick around for such a long time thanks to having more cores than needed. And my 3930K is enjoying a stupidly long life as well.

Yes! 

Not only that, but in a few years if i5's become obsolete (which I don't predict to happen so soon) then one can easily upgrade to a refurbished/used i7 on the same motherboard with the $100-$200 saving and a lower depreciated price. 

As somebody who is very much into emulation Ryzen still isn't there yet, and i7's don't add anything while modern games run great at 1080p 60fps with the right card, which is all the OP wanted. 

i have an i5 4690k overclocked at 4589 mHZ stable and consistant. NO power saving mode. so its always on turbo 24/7 OC'd.

I forgot when i built my rig? 3-4 years ago? i dunno. but with my speeds ryzen 5 doesn't seem that great.  Maybe im just lucky and got a super godly chip because it overclocks so well?

my cpu costs only 250 canadian right now too!

side Note: my R9 390 8G used to hit 85 degrees on full load. After artic silver 5 thermal paste its now maxing out at 74C and its usually on most games 61C.  Idle 41C.  Pretty good stuff that artic silver.

So my tip is artic silver 5 paste and redo any cpu or card you get before you even put it on.  Stock paste from manufactures seems to ALWAYS SUCK. maybe they apply it to fast with a machine or rushed employee

At that clock rate, you have years of life left in it for gaming.

For someone with a CPU like yours, Ryzen's main appeal is the extra cores for multi-tasking, but is it worth spending hundreds of dollars if your current rig handles everything? That's up to you as an individual to decide.

I personally believe Ryzen is a good starting point for AMD, but Zen+/Ryzen 2 is when the chips should start to come into their own in my opinion.

yeah exactly wat i was thinkin. But i've always been a AMD guy...this i5 was my first intel chip.  Because well amd was failing.  Now they seem back to the good old days so my next rig will go back to amd my fav. <3

but im so impressed with my i5 4690k. 

If i needed a comp today i'd get the R5 1600x and oc.

The R5 1600X is a great chip, but I would go for the cheaper R5 1600 and overclock or jump up to the Ryzen 7 1700.
Sadly though, Ryzen doesn't clock well, chips seem to top out at around 4ghz.
So Intel will have a performance edge in gaming for a long time to come yet, untill games start being built with 6+ threads in mind of course.

That could be years away though.

I tend to prefer Intel for my CPU's/Motherboard due to the generally higher warranty length on some boards, overclockability and (And up untill recently...) performance.

AMD is my go-to for GPU's, mostly because of multi-monitor support.