Sorry to quibble, but I can’t even think of a game capable of using an i7’s hyperthreading, much less benefit from it. An i5 is the top of the gaming CPU pyramid, not the i7. A rendering rig would probably see benefit, but that’s heavily dependent on the software being used.

It seems to me that I have talked with a couple of hardcore gamers who’ve named one or two recent games that do (or maybe they’re ones that are in the works?), but I can’t remember them off the top of my head and my preferred games tend to be more sedate and less resource-intensive, so I can’t speak from personal experience.

I’ve detected a noticeable jump in performance on Adobe Creative Suite programs on an i7 compared to an i5, but then I don’t think very highly of the newer versions of Adobe CS and I’m not surprised that it requires pure brute force from a fancy CPU to make them run well.

Either way, what I said stands: unless you’re doing something brutal with your computer, an i5 will probably suit.