I believe I'm tilting towards AMD here, especially because as pointed out in one of the posts above, power consumption leading to additional expense is a pretty fair trade-off. I'm still going to bet my money on the multi-core thing, having gone through some assessments done by Tom's Hardware and Anandtech.
Here's what I've arrived at...
AMD FX-6300 / FX-8350 (help me decide... I don't want to invest too heavily on a CPU which may only give a marginal upside)
Get 8320 over 8350 as former is priced under 10K on flipkart and locally @9.5K
ASUS Sabertooth FX / M5A99FX Pro Rev2.... Tilting more towards to M5A99, because of its VFM nature..
Sabertooth is best but 990Fx pro is VFM and i am using it without a sweat with 8350@4.7.If you are in Delhi or NCR then Vipin imports @ NP has it for 10.5K rs.
Radeon 7870 / 7950 (trying to get this from the US... the price difference is huge!) - any comments?
7950 eyes closed or if 7970 but if buying from India then 760 due to price.Get single big card over two little less powerful cards in SLI/CF configurations due to heat/power.
Corsair TX - 750 (is this an overkill? I may crossfire in the future, and will have atleast 2 HDDs). The other option here is Seasonic SII-620, but i doubt it will suffice.
620W is enough for OC'd FX with single 7950/70 but not for CF due to less connector's.Using same PSU and it's silent.
G-Skill 8 gigs DDR3 1600 RAM
One final thing... If i decide to splurge on a SSD (min 120 gigs), any suggestions? Samsung 840's been recommended at plenty of places, but the reviews don't justify it...
Samsung EVO if you can find locally or 840 both will be fast and you will love it.
Cheerio!