For 99.9% of people on this forum, buying a 555be, unlocking it, you won't get any extra performance spending $1000 on a hex core Intel i7, nor a £200 AMD hex core either, heck even if it doesnt' unlock, sell on a forum for £70 and buy another one, most do unlock however.
These days 4.2Ghz is easy at sub 50C load with any decent cooler with all 4 cores unlocked.
For those that really need the performance, you'd have to decide what you can afford and whats the best in that bracket, if you're making money based on time limits and how fast you rig can get stuff done, almost no price is too high.
But you should potentially be seeing a 4Ghz + hex core AMD beat a quad core i7 in quite a few multithreaded(and 6 thread capable) programs, encoding, 3d modeling and some other stuff.
For gaming, i7 won't get you a single FPS over an AMD setup and a hex core AMD at £200 with a stupidly expensive Crosshair mobo won't get you a single FPS over the cheapest Intel quad(and probably in most situations a dual core clocked high enough either).
I can quite easily see the AMD hex core being not close to the 980x performance, but ahead of the quad core i7 in quite a lot of situations, considering the price jump to get into an Intel hex core they are awful value to be honest.
As for the future, AFAIK Bulldozer will in no way be compatible with AM3, and current chips won't work in Bulldozer Mobo's, its time for a large step forward in terms of socket/power/setup for Bulldozer.
I had thought Sandybridge was supposed to be a pretty large step forward but it would seem not, and it might launch first in mobile and dual core + intergrated GPU setups rather than higher end quads/hex/octo's, though I've not read a lot about it.
Everything I've read, added with a little gut feeling and all the info release on Bulldozer suggests it will be a truly fantastic CPU architecture, however it might not massively shine till you start sticking great low end GPU's on die, which will honestly trounce Intels equivilent gpu offerings. Its looking increasingly likely that AMD/Intel won't be sticking low end gpu's in their highest end chips till beyond Sandybridge and the first Bulldozer's.
I've been recommending this for some time, for most applications you won't gain anything from going to a hex core, AMD are easily the better value and with options for getting quad's at dual core prices, and very soon, hex's at quad core prices with unlocking, Intel can't compete.
Dual cores aren't competitive enough and Intel's cheapest quads just can't match unlocked dual core, or the lowest AMD quads in pricing. These days a quad really is the thing to go for.
ANY quad from really, the past 2 years will last the next year, 2 probably and maybe even 3 years more in terms of gaming and 99% of home user applications.
More than enough to last till Intel/AMD's next gen, so no matter the company, brand, loyalty, I'd be buying the value end of either company, a i7 750, or a dual core unlocked for AMD< or a cheap P2 quad(in a couple weeks the new ones that might unlock to hex cores would be silly not to go for to be honest).
Sata 3 and USB 3 are completely pointless for almost everyone. Sure USB3 might finally enable some hard drive enclosures to do better speeds over USB, but e-sata already maxes out the hard drives, so its not a huge deal.
Theres only one Sata 3 SSD to date, and its not the best SSD around anyway, its still the random read/writes of any size that tend to dictate how a system "feels" rather than the sequential, random read/writes are so far below the Sata 2 limits that Sata 3 is basically redundant for now and really shouldn't be in most peoples thinking for "must have features", they sound good but are almost completely useless for EVERYONE.
AFAIK theres only a handful of USB3 devices, most memory sticks with writes at 10mb/s anyway.
Going for the cheaper options and unlocking/overclocking also makes sense but perhaps the current high end does make sense if you intend to keep if for some time. They may not use all their power right now for say gaming but as GPU's get more powerful you're going to use more of that cpu power aren't you?
