Most modern games are GPU-bottlenecked, rather than CPU. In fact, most of those modern games (with a few exceptions, like ArmA II) will run perfectly fine on a $60 Athlon II X2 240, given that you have a good enough graphics card. A Core-i5 is already somewhat overkill if you're talking about just using it for gaming, so the i7 would be a complete waste.

So, the question that I'd ask you is: What are you using your computer for? If just gaming, then you should be good to go for 3-4 years or so with the i5 (at which point a CPU with the processing power of the i7 will be dirt-cheap). If you're doing heavy a/v editing, game development, or something similarly CPU-intensive, however, then the i7 might be a worthy investment.

Regardless, that is an excellent price on an i7. Damn, I wish I had a Microcenter near me.

Also, a $500 video card is - and I cannot emphasize this enough - a complete waste. Buy a $150 one now and another $150 one three years from now. You'll save yourself a good deal of dough without sacrificing performance.

unless you do a lot of video editing, capturing, H.264 encoding, you don't need an i7, hell even an i5 does the job really well, i7 just does it better.

i7 is overkill for almost everything. Most games can run fine on a dual core, get an Core 2 Quad or an i5 and you will be fine for a long time to come.

My general advice when it comes to computers is only upgrade when you have a legitimate need to ... If you're upgrading because you want the best you will (probably) never be happy and will always be broke.

I agree with this completely. Better yet, try to find something higher end but now obselete (like a 4870 or 4890) on clearance and buy that. When I built my PC last year, I paid $50 AR for a 8800gs (aka 9600 gso) 384mb. Still works great for most games, though I will upgrade to something better in 2010. Not worth it at all to spend more than $200 on a video card.

I also recently acquired an i7 and motherboard very very cheaply. But in looking at the actual benefit of upgrading from what I have... I just don't see it. My overclocked q6600 will be fine for at least another year or two. I'm selling the i7 and motherboard.

I'd wait until you have a game for your PC that you can't play comfortably to upgrade, since PC technology changes so fast. It's getting to the point now where a huge increase in power only gives a small increase in appearance. I think consoles are a big limiting factor for PC games right now since that is where the market is, once the next generation roles out it would probably be a good time to by the latest and greatest PC.

Wait for 8 cores not 8 threads.

Love i7! Hoping for the intel chip with six cores =)

^ You won't have to wait very long for that. IIRC its coming out in 2-3 months.

and cost an arm and a leg too, I'd wait for price drop, or wait for AMD to catch up with their stuff that has lvl3 cache built in.