I bought an i5 2500k, overclocked it to 4.5ghz and couldn't be happier

picked it up for only $149 at Micro Center about 6-7 months ago. I used to always use AMD (and still would if I needed to) but there's no denying that Intel has been putting out some great processors the last few years.
I use mine for VM Boxes, work, and heavy gaming.