an i3 with a reasonable amount of ram (say 16 to 24 GB) and a GB or two graphics memory on a good card will perform better than an i5 starved on 4 or 8 GB of RAM and a cheap 512 Mb graphics card.
16 to 24 GB of RAM, "reasonable", OMG!? And I thought I was stretching it when I put in 8GB instead of my originally planned 4GB in my latest Core i7 system! :lol:
If you are running Windows 7 like I do (I have actively been avoiding Win 8 this far), then I'd say that 4GB is really enough for most ("regular") people who will likely be utilizing some 50%-70% of this tops in their general usage patterns. Instead, I would say that a good way to *really* increase the general user experience with Windows, is to abandon HDD's for Windows and applications partitions (maybe have a big HDD (or a couble, perhaps RAID mirrored) for data and bulk storage), and go for a *fast* SSD instead.
I'd boldly claim that for most people in their line of general office work (as well as many peoples general computer usage patterns at home, *gamers excluded* of course), a desktop Win7 system based on a Haswell Core i3 with h87 chipset, a SSD like Samsung 840 pro, 4GB of fast RAM, and *NO* GFX card will be just fine! And the price tag for such a system will be very attractive, which will make sense for people/corporations in this ("regular"/office/"low-end") customer segment who doesn't like paying premium money for premium system resources they will likely never use anyway...
My experience says that gamer's usually aims for fast (and/or OC'd) Core i5/z87 systems which makes sense from a money/performance point of view, and focus their money spending on top notch GFX cards instead.
Core i7 mostly makes sense for workstation usage IMHO.
