Not really. But it all depends on the field you're looking into. Majorly, the reason people tend to buy i5 instead of i7 is because games nowadays are not benefiting from hyper threading. Actually, the majority of games does not use all of the 4 main cores properly. I assume by the time games start to benefiting from the virtual cores from hyper threading these processors will be long outdated. You can't say i7 is 'future proof' but if it'll make you comfortable getting it while knowing you might never benefit from this $80 difference, sure, why not. In the end it's all up to your choice.
Not really. But it all depends on the field you're looking into. Majorly, the reason people tend to buy i5 instead of i7 is because games nowadays are not benefiting from hyper threading. Actually, the majority of games does not use all of the 4 main cores properly. I assume by the time games start to benefiting from the virtual cores from hyper threading these processors will be long outdated. You can't say i7 is 'future proof' but if it'll make you comfortable getting it while knowing you might never benefit from this $80 difference, sure, why not. In the end it's all up to your choice.