Merging Gaming and Workstation into one upgrade

[ScorpioJonesy]

I am looking to consolidate my gaming and workstation PC into one and wanted some advice on if I can go i7 4970K (preferred due to cost and reuse of RAM) or if I should go i7 5820K. The current setup is...

Gaming:
i5 2500K @ 4.2
8GB DDR3
Gigabyte Z68-UD3-B3 motherboard
AMD 290

Workstation:
AMD 8320
32GB DDR3 RAM
ASUS M5A97 r2.0
Basic GFX card

The workstation is used for VMware workstation which I why I went 8 core AMD at the time. How much better would the 4970K be at that when I have 7 or 8 VM's running?

 

[noobgamer40]

An i7 4790k would be able to handle up to 8 VMs (Thats what I heard) and obviously better than a fx 8320, so I would go with that, since VMs also rely on ram, so having 40gb of ram is useful.
keep:
-All ram
-amd r9 290 (for gaming)
-Basic GFX card (for running multiple monitors/physx card)