Is there any leading GPU manufacturer nowadays or are they all pretty much equal?

I notice that Zotac tend to give a 5 year warranty whilst others give 2 or 3 years, and I know a couple of people who currently have a Zotac card and they seem pleased with them.

Then there are the usual ones, such as ASUS, MSI, EVGA and Gigabyte.

I have been advised against going with KFA2 as both my work colleague and one of his friends have had them and both failed, one just a week over the 2 year warranty, the other after only a few weeks from purchase.

Leading ? not really. there are manufacturers that select components and organise assembly processes to minimize problems , and others that simply care for their margins. And there are manufacturers that have good design offices for their coolers , and others that get from their suppliers what costs the less...

From personal / friends experience , I ould say EVGA, Zotac, Asus, Gainward or MSI (without particular order.) are likely to be fine. For myself, I mostly use EVGA (geforce) & XFX (Radeon)

Gigabyte; MSI & Zotac are great for GPUs. Asus might be fine too but (might just have been bad luck) I had two high end cards of them died pretty fast in the past so I personally avoid them. As Ralackk said, Nvidia is about to release a complete new tech this year. I recommend going with a cheap gtx 750ti as placeholder and replace it with the new stuff when released (or rather shortly after the first test results got released).

Considering that you plan to waste money and get a lower performing PC, let me quote this article:

"Gaming, however, is a very different animal. In gaming, Hyper-Threading never offers a single performance boost, while it impacted BioShock Infinite’s minimum FPS by 11% (meaning the Core i5 outscored the i7). The net effect is a 2% performance decrease for Hyper-Threading."

I'd go with the Strix series from Asus and that because:
-in light and moderate gaming scenarios, when watching movies, when working or browsing the fans are effectively stopped and never kick in, meaning absolutely no sounds from the videocard.

You can see all the other benefits here:
https://www.asus.com/Microsite/2015/VGA/Strix-Series/
https://youtu.be/27hBljJjmGI
https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/STRIX-Gaming-Products/

Also, for FullHD and below resolutions gaming, you're ok with i3/i5, gtx750ti-950, 500GB SSD, 360-400W power source.
Don't waste your money! ;)

Good luck.

What I would call a waste of money for an inferior machine would be to go for Haswell-E (5930K , 5960X) , that will actually underform a i5 5765C, and, for that matter an I5 6600K. I also agree that the performance/price ratio is in favour of an I5. But I note that the ratio I7 / I5 has improved between the 4xxx and the 6xxxx.

This said, if someone has a preference for the i7 series Skylakes, he accepts to pay more for the flattening part of the performance curve but still gets something more, not less.

I would go for Zotac or MSI GTX 750 ti or 950 like anothername has suggested just to get what you have going again.
And when start new build use the 750-950 until the new tech comes out.

I dunno, ymmv, but I've read a similar article a while ago and temporarily disabled Hyperthreading to do a few test. The difference in games was pretty much zero. Lost almost 20 percent performance when doing serious stuff though.

May be true, but most people I know who buy a Core i7 hardly do serious stuff, they just buy the i7 because it's "better". And that's simply a waste of money. That was my argument earlier in the thread: you're typically better off buying something that's a little better than what you want and replacing it sooner, than spending a lot more money for something that's slightly better than that and waiting a long time to replace it.

That's usually the case, that the move from mid range to high end means that you're spending 50%-100% more money for 0%-20% more performance for the tasks you usually do. So if you have specific needs, where the extra performance benefits you and you feel it's worth the extra money, go ahead. But spending this money "just in case", "for the future", that would be better spent by spending less money in more regular intervals.

Ok, to some extent but why do you focus on the i5/i7 choice. If you want a competent gaming machine, you can save something like 200 EUR by opting for an i5 instead of an i7. ACtually, GPU choice matters even more, and god knows how GPUs quickly become obsolescent.. You can buy a system with an i7 and a wholly acceptable set of components for 20% more than the same system with an i5.

If I push the reasoning at its extreme, opting for a Radeon R9 380 coupled to AMD 860K, actually divides the cost of a system by 3. It's of course a much less performing system, but if you put it on the performance/price curve, it's not bad at all and many will actually find the system quite good. Yet very few advise that.

The hive mind answers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds

Your budget is HUGE. Also, you definitely don't need an i7 for gaming.

Because the i7 was mentioned specifically.

I already suggested a PC with a GeForce 960. I think that's a decent choice, but one can also get a 970 for around £250 (£90 more than a 4GB 960) and that should be enough for 1080p gaming for a while. I do think that the 970 is worth the extra over the 960 for people who want high frame rate high quality rendering.

Still, no need to go wild with a 980 or more expensive. Money saved here and on an i5 vs. i7 will be enough to buy another mid-range+ card 3 years down the road, and on the whole I think that would be a better choice than a faster card now.

Thanks to everyone in this thread. I'm also looking to build a new PC and I'm not patient enough to wait for Pascal 6months (new expensive price) or even 9months. This thread has been very helpful. New car for everyone in this thread and whatever world they want to rule.

Pascal is a bet. The technology change should deliver energy effiency increades frequences and ability to deal with more memory. in absolute terms, probably a huge gain of performance. Remains to see how its actual implentation translates into additional benefits. As with each generation change, the first cards on the market will be the upper range and gamers will rush to get them. But for those alredy having previous gen upper rage cards, it may not change much to their immediate gaming experience ( 160 fps rather than 100, yeah, fine) , except in a few games. Imho, the main benefit could very well be in the upper mid range ( current 960 / 970 ) , where the effective gains will be more noticeable .