I have the 955 BE and it is a fantastic CPU. I run all my games on max settings and 4/9XAA, but this is obvioulsy more GPU dependent. Lets just say that my 955BE (clocked at around 3.8GHz) does not seem to bottleneck my 2 4870s
The 965 is also going to be a monster, but it wont touch the top end i7, and i9 is going to destroy the world when it is released.
So, to answer the op's question: Intel i7, without a doubt. Would I buy one? No.
Well - then you need an x58 board and ddr3 ram instead of a barebones phenom2. And so the argument spirals on...
.LOL How is the beast running mate^^
I practically built it but have no clue how it runs..lol.