Jayrc; if you want an unbiased opinion from a long-time AMD fan, the current best gaming cpu for the money is a Core i5 2500, which took the crown from the previous best – the Core i5 750. (
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...or,2895-4.html) Get the ‘k’ model if you want to overclock and the price difference isn’t too high, remembering that overclocking your cpu will not provide a huge gain in frame rate anyway.
My favourite for reading up on comparisons is Tom’s Hardware, although there are plenty of others (type ‘pc hardware review’ into Google and follow your nose), but you will find that this is the general consensus.
If you use your pc for work as well as gaming, you might want to look at a (hyper-threaded) Core i7 2600 (k or vanilla model), as this could be beneficial.
Good luck!