Gaming rig Phenom II BE? Llano? or wait for bulldozer?

hi, im wanting to make a good gaming machine. i dont plan on running multiple processes at once or 3D moddeling or anything extremely taxing. the only thing ill be doing is gaming and surfing the Internet, possibly at the same time.

i would like to build this in 2 stages first stage having the processor, ram, mobo, psu, case, os, and hd / and the second with the GPU possibly 2 cards.

now just because im not going to be doing anything extremely taxing does not mean i want a mediocre gaming experience. i want the the resolution and texture qualities maxed out, the aa and af wont be maxed out because beyond x4/x8 i cant see a difference so ill probably set them between x2/x4 and x4/x8.

i do realize that with the Llano alone i wont reach that but it will be better than mobo dedicated graphics and eventually i will be adding a AMD HD 6870 and would X-fire them, and then eventually get a second card and 3 X-fire them together.

i know that the Phenom II BE x4 is good and powerfull and will get me the system i want but ill have to buy a card to to get the graphics i want off the bat.

or should i wait for the Bulldozer?

now my second question is what will be the difference between the Llano and the Bulldozer? does the Bulldozer have a integrated gpu also? does the Llano use the modual type cores that the Bulldozer uses?

Mid $500 Bulldozer Ready

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103808

Mobo: ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD 970 $108 shipping included
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131767

Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 2x2GB DDR3 $37
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231277

GPU: PowerColor AX6770 1GB DDR5 $100 after MIR and shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131434

HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822152185

Case: Rosewill Challenger $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811147153

PSU: Antec EarthWatts 500W $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371035

Optical: ASUS 24X DVD Burner OEM $20
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827135204

This build is around 550$ give or take. I believe there are bulldozer-based APU coming out around 2012. Llano is good but the CPU will definitely not match up to Bulldozer. I do recommend waiting for bulldozer to come out though but there's a stickied page on forum > CPU just for bulldozer rumors!

Buying a discrete GPU lol.

well im mainly interested in it because:

1. it will be easier for me to get the system sooner and play what i want at decent settings and then buy the GPU cards later when i can afford them

and 2. because from my understanding i can run the Llano gpu with my card(s) in a crossfire configureation and boost them further than i would with 2 cards alone. almost like having 3 cards in crossfire but one slightly weaker but still there to help

I see bulldozer as a good cpu if you will have a highly multithreaded app that can use lots of modest speed core. I think it will be like the X6 processors. Nobody really knows, and the lack of leaked benchmarks does not bode well for performance.
Gaming today, uses two cores, three at most. The faster, and more capable the better.

I see Llano as good for the user who will be satisfied with a modest gaming system that has a $100 gpu.
Once you go past that, the gpu advantage of llano disappears and you will need a discrete graphics card to do what you want.
And, you will be stuck with a cpu that is under powered to drive a higher end graphics card.

A phenom X4 would be a better solution. Add in a temporary graphics card to get you going. Sell it when you want the big gaming card.

If you are looking at <$200 cpu's, you really should look at this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2859.html
The conclusion is that sandy bridge is a great gamer.
The 2100 is quite good, and I suppose the integrated graphics could get you started. It is about the equivalent of a $50 graphics card. Not as good as llano, but the 2100 has longer legs when paired with a strong graphics card.

Yes, at that point, I think you will be limited by the llano cpu.
In general, amd does not get the same compute power per clock than sandy bridge does.
Anandtech did a review, and compared llano to the i3-2105 which is similarly priced.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review

i still think you have much more future proofness with SB.

It can only do so when mated with certain discrete GPUs using Hybrid CrossFire. Independently, the graphics performance of the top-performing APU's are much more similar to 5550/5570 performance levels, not 5770 performance levels.

If I were building a gaming rig right this minute, I'd choose a Sandy-Bridge build, barring any serious budget concerns. But I wouldn't go Llano on a performance desktop. Perhaps if it were a child's desktop or HTPC I'd choose Llano, but definitely not in a "gaming" machine.

For gaming, AMD Phenom II 955 + AM3+ Mobo.

For HTPC

AMD Llano A8 CPU + FM1 Mobo.

Many folks are considering the Llano based systems for gaming systems, although I can't for the life of me figure out why....

Llano APU with a discrete graphics card is about the same as an Athlon II X4 635/645 with the same card, which is to say, slower than the Phenom with the same discrete graphics card....

All of the above will be pummeled by i5-2300 based systems when using the same GPU.

ANy questions?

Today, the 2500K is as good as it gets for gaming, particularly when overclocked.
I doubt that anybody will need anything stronger for the next few years.

That said, the 22nm ivy bridge follow on due the end of the year is supposed to be compatible with the P67 and Z68 chipsets, requiring only a bios update to run.

Do you know somewthing these guys don't?
http://www.techpowerup.com/143951/ [...] ailed.html

Not at all. Sorry. I missed an "all" in there, as in "they won't all drop into..." instead. While IB's "refreshed" models will be compatible, the new enthusiast-class models that are to follow will indeed be bringing another socket with them, just as I said. Such CPUs are set to become Intel's 3800/3900-series, which are expected to be 6-core (and perhaps even 8-core) CPUs.

Though I didn't mention it before, IB seems irrelevant to a PC being built today. For that matter, I feel the same about BD. Building a PC today with the hope of using the yet unproven tech of tomorrow seems a rather flawed approach. Besides, few consumers would spend $200+ on a CPU today and just replace it with a slightly different one of likely a similar (and perhaps greater) cost in 4-6 months. Perhaps in a couple years, but not within only a few months.

Politely i must question your logic:
First you wanted to buy llano?
then you want to buy a phenom II X2 ?
and then wait to buy amd bulldozer?
amd phenom II X2 and mobo after that an unproven bulldozer cpu?
Could cost more than what you really have to spend...