Some thoughts after going through the reviews and all:-
1) BD is either too late or too ahead of its time, depending on the way you look at it.
2) With so much talks going on single-core performance, I wonder why Intel/AMD not releasing a 4Ghz single core CPU, or at best a 4Ghz dual core with strong per core performance and strong overclocking potential. It looks like that should be enough for our normal PC usage for the time being. I mean, how many of the general PC users and even gamers are interested in running multiple VM simultaneously or in heavily threaded apps?
3) Pricing of the products is pretty much spot on. The 8120 looks like the CPU to go for, if you are actually thinking of buying a BD.
4) The biggest flop of the lot is the FX-4100. It is worse than Athlon II X4 at quite a few benches making the older Phenom II or even Llano A8 CPUs a better choice.
5) In continuation with the previous point, it looks like BD needs 4 modules/8 cores to remain competitive and can't go lower than 3 modules/6 core. So Piledriver with 6 modules/12 cores can actually deliver the promised/expected performance level of BD. If AMD can fix the single-core performance by that time, it might actually compete well with Ivy Bridge too. I do agree, at this moment all these are rather wishful thinking.
6) The Phenom II suddenly looks better than before. Reviewers are a funny lot.
7) The biggest problem seems to be investing in the AM3+ platform at this moment. With the final generation of AM3+ CPUs expected to come out in 2012 itself, users won't be getting a much longer upgrade path.
8) For gamers on a budget, nothing much has changed. Going the BD route would probably allow a better GPU compared to SNB which in turn means better gaming performance except in CPU-intensive games, which are, thankfully, getting fewer by days.
Why are people going ga ga over Sandy-E, its clearly made for super rich enthusiasts, damn quad channel 32GB(4x8GB) ram kit from corsair costs a freaking 999$, so you can see the entire line up is made for wealthy buyers, on the other hand we will have Ivy, with an improved GPU and also 10-30% increased performance, less heat, power consumption, and hence more OC potential at a very consumer friendly price(to avoid clash with Sandy-E, ivy will probably max out below 350$, like 2700k now).
The improved scheduler will affect both 2600k and BD, and I am guessing, to edge out the competition 2600k will take 2500k's place and 2700k will be the new 2600k, so both of intel's top sandy will be hyper-threaded, effectively nullifying any performance improvement BD will have on win 8.
+1 for that. Windows 8 can't change the scenario overnight. Particularly, no one knows what will actually happen after 1 year. And by that time, we would be talking about newer CPUs for sure.
