When to upgrade?

[jaywald]

I currently have a Phenom II x4 965BE running on some low end m-ATX mobo from Asus, I really want to upgrade it because I hate the look of it (it looks tiny in my case and the colours are horrible), it doesn't have SATA III which my SSD does, only 2 RAM slots and only 1 PCIE x16 slot. Unfortunately, it was all i could afford at the time. I have only had my CPU for a year-ish so it still has a good time to go before upgrading.

Here's the dilemma, I hoping to get 2x HD 7850's 2GB and I feel my 965 will hold me back in games. Therefore I was thinking about buying either buying an i7, Bulldozer (which all gamers seem to hate however I think some people who know nothing about CPU's just jump on the band wagon) on waiting for the new AMD CPU range (Piledrivers I believe).

If I buy a AM3/+ board to suit my 965 I will have to buy another to suit either an i7 or a Piledriver (which I believe are using a new FM socket) a Bulldozer would fit but is it any good?

What should I do?

 

[akxpckwb]

I'd go for the i7 alternative. As much as I want AMD to compete with Intel they simply cannot. At least not right now and I'm not convinced Piledriver will do it either.
It should be noted that you current 965 plus 2x 7850 will be a good setup for gaming and that even with a bottleneck it will be good enough to get high settings on mostly everything

 

[clutchc]

Go for the i7. No comparison.

But if you are a gamer mainly, you don't need the hyper threading of the i7. You can go with an i5 such as the i5-2500K or the i5-3750K and not have to worry about bottle necking the cards.

 

[jaywald]

Thanks for the advice, since I am mostly a gamer I'm going to go with the i5-2500K and a decent mobo.