Highly recommend the i5, if you settle for the i3 you will not get the best out of any graphics upgrades you carry out. Also be sure to have 8GB of ram, i'm fairly sure my machine having only 4GB is slowing it down a touch.
Intel Ivy Bridge CPU's are not coming down in price for the foreseeable future. All their parts are pre-sold, so MicroCenter's cheap deal on the i7 3770k is Microcenter taking a LOSS of profit and being awesome to their customers. If you want to buy small now, and hope to get a nice juicy i5 3570k for cheap in 1-2 years, think again. IF you're on a budget and can't afford an i5 I reccomend the i3 3220 for PS2. I have that chip and consistently pull 35 FPS in big battles. You just have to tweak your graphics to ultra and a few other settings to high/medium/low. You're going to get a lot out of the i3 ivy CPU and it still will be relevant in 1-2 years before you upgrade to something better. If your cash strapped, go with intel, guaranteeing yourself a stable upgrade path for PC gaming for years to come. Z77 Motherboard needed and I reccomend a 600W psu that is 80PLUS certified or better for single GPU solutions. DONE.
