[Neuromancer]

Rogue for bointing I would defintiely say go i5.

If you are looking for a great all around rig though, if you are going to go core-eye, than you should really spend the extra $100 and go with an X58 platform. New boards are coming out with USB/SATA 3 which means a lot of high end boards are dropping in price (You can find used Classifieds in the low $300 now! not possible a couple of months ago)

The reason X58 costs more than P55 is getting a good quality board (if you dont mind used, you can get great X58 boards for under $200) RAM will cost you the same despite needing an extra stick for X58, because performance wise you need MUCH faster ram on the P55 setup. source

As an AMD guy that really believes in that intangible "desktop snappiness" of the AMD architecture, I was VERY impressed with my X58 which I have not been impressed wit hthe desktop performance of an Intel chip since PIII