i7 is great. very low power consumption, high speed. if you have low budget go for i5. for desktop i5 640. btw loved thread number D-:
i3 is enough for me, as pure white hat optimizer I think I don't need such a very fast processor not unless I will buy automated tools that will eat large portion of my PC
Try the new intel core i7 Extreme. It has 6 cores and an awesome clock speed. Model : Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition 3.33GHz 12 MB L3 Cache. But the price is way high around 1000$....... lol