The reason other things are being considered, some people do more with their pc than just game. It keeps going back to what the users needs are. If someone comes to the forums and says hey, I'm on a budget and all I do is play games and check email then the i3 is a perfect fit for them. How many times do people actually say that though? Many people will say 'ok, this is my budget - I want to game, check email, do some video editing and possibly stream/record game play'. Well now we're in a whole different boat and if an i5 can be squeezed into their budget without completely blitzing on the rest of the build by going with a pizza box for a case, a 250gb 5400rpm drive and a $15 psu - then it's a good option to move them into an i5. This is assuming they're within a certain budget and their needs dictate more power than an i3 can handle comfortably.
For all intents and purposes, ht is about the only thing separating an i3 from a pentium anniversary for most people. The i3 does have avx support but hardly any programs use it. According to ms, audio encoding, image/video editing, modeling software, financial analysis and engineering software. My best bet is if you're doing those types of tasks you're not working on an i3 much less a pentium ae. The i3 has the aes new instruction set that the g3258 doesn't but unless you're working with bulk encryption/decryption software, doubt it's useful to you.
Ht does have a benefit over dual core. Whether or not the benefit is worth it depends on the circumstances. If you're dealing with a single or dual core cpu, ht will be far more beneficial than it will to a quad core or hex core. Ht is hit and miss and when it works its performance varies widely from 5%, 15%, 20%, rarely 30%. Most often it's around 10-12%.
Only the top end i5's are over $200 and barely. The rest are below $200. Local pricing by region will have to be taken into account, I'm mostly familiar with u.s. pricing schedules. $108 is the cheapest i3 and it's oem which likely means you'll need a separate cooler which adds to the cost. $112 for 4160/4170. A 4370 is $145. An i5 4460 is $176, it has been as low as $160 just a couple months ago. So no, not all i5's are double the price. The 4690k is closer to standard k series i5 pricing (skylake went a bit nuts at release and is higher than previous devil's canyon, haswell, ivy, sandy etc) and it's $228 at the moment. Barely double the money of an i3 and twice the cores, twice the hardware.
Saying i5's are 'so expensive' by cherry picking the cheapest i3 with the most expensive i5, let's do it the other way. An i3 'can' cost as much as $152 for an i3 4350 and an i5 4460 can be had for $176 so an i5 is 'only' $24 more. Sounds like a bargain when you put it that way. Comparing data has to be done reasonably, or as this case shows any spin doctoring can quickly turn the tables to suit the agenda.
Assuming that a person only gets an i5 because they can't afford an i7 sounds like it's i3 or i7. We're back to the g3258 or 5960x or bust line of thinking. Where ht isn't worth it is the i7 quad cores. The top end i5 and top end i7 (quad) have a price difference of $100 and there isn't $100 worth of performance there. It makes more sense when you're comparing a pentium ae to an i3 and the cost difference is around $40 for ht. When you're stuck at two cores you'll likely need the ht much more often so it will come as a bigger benefit and at a $40 premium. When you have a quad core to begin with, the amount that ht improves performance is less often than the case with the i3 and it comes at a $100 premium. 250% the additional cost vs the $40 spent from a g3258 to i3. Skylake it only gets worse as the cpu's have jumped in price and the 6700k is within $10 of a hexcore i7 5820k with 15mb cache and quad channel memory.
It's absolutely correct that ht doesn't work the same with all programs and because of that fact alone makes a hefty premium for ht dubious at best. It's a roll of the dice. Cores offer actual performance physically built into the cpu. This is starting to sound more like a troll thread with little evidence of what makes an i3 the end all be all cpu. Mostly because there is none. Even if it's all one person requires it doesn't automatically qualify the i3 to be 'the' cpu of choice.
Questions were asked about why the i3 was overlooked or underestimated. It's not. It gets recommended often, but if someone has the budget for better equipment why stop there? If they have additional needs, why stop there? There's no compelling reason not to suggest other hardware if it's within someone's budget. The 750ti is a good little gaming card. It's low power, affordable, games halfway decent but let's be honest, it's no 970 or 980ti. If someone had a budget higher than a 750ti but lower than a 980ti, why wouldn't a 970 be suggested? Just to argue nope, I play indie games at 720p and a 750ti works for what I need so that's all anyone needs - isn't a valid argument.
When it comes to purely gaming the i3 can often hold its own and doesn't do half bad. It does however depend on the game and depends on the graphics card it's paired with. For budget gaming the i3 is a good choice, so why isn't it the go to cpu all the time? What happens when you play metro redux or thief on a gtx 960? The i3 appears just as good as the i5/i7 at max settings at 1080p. What happens when you play the same games on a 980? The story changes and while the i3 doesn't do 'bad' it also drops to the lowest of the 3 cpu's and shows to be a bottleneck in performance.
In metro redux the i7's ht only gains around 5fps on the i5 while the i5 gains a solid 10fps over the i3. In thief we see the i5 best the i7 by 1fps so call it even and due to margin of error. The i3 again sinks by 14fps.
http://www.techspot.com/review/972-intel-core-i3-vs-i5-vs-i7/page5.html
Crysis 3 seems to benefit from stronger cpu's.
http://techbuyersguru.com/best-gaming-cpus-pentium-vs-core-i3-vs-core-i5-vs-core-i7?page=1
Average and especially min frame rates on f1 2013 are pretty far apart between an i3 and i5.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7963/the-intel-haswell-refresh-review-core-i7-4790-i5-4690-and-i3-4360-tested/11
The list can go on and on and what it confirms is the i3 does pretty good for a budget cpu and handles many games well. Does it handle all games well? No. Not as well as a true quad core does. If the person isn't interested in any of those games then it makes little difference to them. If it's someone new to pc gaming, then what do you suggest? Well this is a good cpu for the price with the exception for this game, this game, that game - wait what? So now the person has to be conscious of what games they do or don't play as it may play great or it may play just ok. If they go with an i5, there aren't any games that play 'just ok' and play great on an i7, if it doesn't play for beans on an i5 an i7 won't make any difference and the game is likely a shoddy port that won't run well on anything.
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