I know phenom 6 doesn't outperform i5. But to upgrade from i5 to i7 900 (9xx) series takes serious upgrades and a lot of money. So, I will just go for a Phenom x6 for now and get the Bulldozer later when I can afford it. I will ONLY have to upgrade to the Bulldozer and nothing else right? No RAM upgrade or anything right?Which RAM speed do I need to use?Do I need matched ram? I'm buying these parts used (wherever savings will be had from ebay,amazon, newegg etc...), except for PS and cooling, and expect to build for around 600 dollars, before bulldozer cpu and 16 gig ram upgrades).I'm in engineering school, so 8gigs of ram is absolute minimum for desktop (preferably the full 16 gigs - eventually). Any other issues I need to think about? Do I seem to have the right ideas?
You will need either 1333mhz or 1600mhz DDR3 RAM for Bulldozer. Since 1600mhz memory costs exactly the same as 1333mhz RAM it would make more sense to buy the faster one since it will allow you to overclock further. Matched RAM is preferable, if you are over clocking the processor it makes sense to have all identical RAM. No other upgrades are necessary. I'm not sure what makes you think AMD is the better option here -- what will you do if the AMD Bulldozer series turns out to be a dud and isn't as good as the Sandy Bridge series? And what if the AM3+ socket gets phased out and gets replaced by AM4 socket next year? You'll still end up paying roughly the same amount for a motherboard upgrade as well. You might as well spring for a Core i5 2500k and a few years later upgrade to LGA 2011 Ivy Bridge. But obviously, it's too early to think about Bulldozer because AMD has been delaying it forever and it will still be many months until the benchmarks come out.
If you purchase a AM3+ motherboard that utilizes the 800 series chipset and upgrade to a AM3+ cpu in the future you maybe required to do a bios flash as currently these motherboards dont list AM3+ cpu's on their support lists as the cpu doesnt exist.(Its hard to claim full bios support if the am3+ cpu hasnt even been released) The only motherboards that will trully support AM3+ cpu's(without bios upgrade)utilize the 900 series chipsets and they wont be released untill the AM3+ line of cpu's are officially released next month So just take into consideration any 800 series chipset motherboard with AM3+ support may require a bios upgrade for AM3+ cpu compatibilty
