Save the money and get the i5. The additional "cores" are not cores at all but "hyperthreads", an illusion of additional cores created by using idle CPU resources to interleave instruction streams from different threads.

Server loads and carefully designed thread-intensive programs benefit from the hyperthreads. The difference in price is a waste of money for current games and games near enough in the future to justify a purchase now.

Well lifecycle was probably not the correct word what I mean is that new processors are available much sooner now then they used to be. It used be that we got a new processor upgrade available after every two years even with the Intel Pentium processors. But now with the 64-bit Intel processors the time between Sandy Bridge (2nd generation) and Ivy Bridge (3rd generation) is just 6-8 months. You can copy paste the link in the browser to see what I based my assertion on.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_microprocessors

Yeah, you're probably right. Though it doesn't house anything important, mostly games from DD services. Those can always be re-downloaded.

According to that page Sandy Bridge was introduced January 2011 and Ivy Bridge April 2012, so that's 15 months. When it comes to Core i3 variants the wait was 20 months. I don't see any detailed dates for Core 2 generation, but I guess part of that was that there wasn't as much differentiation, more a gradual release of newer CPU's.

Regardless, Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge -> Haswell were all marginal improvements.

That said, Intel is supposed to be doubling down on desktop processors, so maybe the next gen will offer something significantly faster.

I wouldnt be counting on any truly significant increase in processing power.

Atleast intel is aiming for reducing TDP and the efficiency instead of raw computing power. You can also expect improvements in the integrated GPU - but thats not too much worth for anyone who is "True Gamer(tm)". The last few intel cpus havent been very good at overclocking - no definite news if thats going to continue same or not in the future models.

However, it is good to keep in mind that if youre mostly playing GOG oldies and indies, then you dont necessarily need discrete GPU even today. For example amd's APU cpus could play like 95+% of GOG current games at comfortable level with just the integrated gpu alone.

There arent too many games that have requirements like Witcher 2 or higher atm.

I have been wishing real hard that a company like Qualcomm or Samsung would take-over AMD and we'd finally have some competition in the x86 market. As it stands now, Intel has a near monopoly with virtually no competition from AMD.

AMD is also a process of transition and has not been focusing on R&D too much due to being resource constricted and this has given Intel even more leeway to do as they see fit.

But really, we're not talking about that. I doubt anyone buys a new computer and thinks how it will manage GOG games. It's about new games, that do require a fast CPU.

In this respect I think that a $200 CPU can last quite a few years these days.

actually amd is way far ahead intel in certain areas of engineering - namely multicore/thread stuff and integrating gpu to cpu and sharing their resources together ....but software development didnt go as fast to that as AMD had planned. So intel has been ruling the past few years with its better single core power instead.

If software was coded to use properly multiple cores, the table would be looking quite different.
most games are gpu restriced these days, so any given cpu will last quite while in gaming. Heck, you could buy few gens old 2500K and new GPU and youd be just fine when it comes to gaming.