First things first. 2 thumbs up for your avatar!
Secondly, budget is extremely important, I'm pushing it as much as I can to get the cheapest quad-core Intel, because I do quite a bit of everything and may or may not do rendering/editing if this setup works as well as I want it to. I used to overclock, but backed off in preference to stability & lower maintenance approach. *shrugs*
Back to business, I checked the H97 boards at Newegg, and for the components I'd want, the Asrock H97 Pro4 would do, but cost more than the Z97 board I mentioned (even before it's $10 MIR), so why bother? I'll also benefit more by going 4 more gigs of ram for $30 than $120 for 16g of 10% faster ram. Anyways, anything specific this ole' American AMD fan needs to learn about building an intel platform now?
Btw, my god-ly modded skyrim barely reached 30fps on my old monitor @ 1280x1024, and I hadn't tried it since I got my new x-mas toy, a 1080p 24" Acer monitor.
My framerate in Civ5 seems fine @ 1920x1080, but later in the game with wait time for turns on a *small* map with just 4-5 civs takes far too long for my taste. (I'm an offline player because I use satellite internet, otherwise limited to dial-up over here)