In some ways Bulldozer is Phenom 1.0 all over again. With Phenom 1, even the boards had shitty support- remember the 125-140w TDP support issues and Gigabyte 790x boards catching fire? 😳 I had one, I know... 😒
Now, we have some great boards- that Asus Sabretooth looks real good. If you're currently running something slower than a Phenom II/ Thuban, then IMO this is as good an upgrade as an i5/i7 system. It performs in the ballpark- which is good enough and I doubt anyone will feel the difference between a 2500k and a Bulldozer rig.
Plus it clocks up to 4.5-4.6 easily which is 600mhz-1ghz more than Phenom II/ Thuban on average. At those speeds, it'll play/ do anything pretty fucking fast.
I have a feeling of deja vu here - 3+ years ago I built a system for my bro. He wanted an Intel E8xxx system cause that was all the rage then, but being an AMD fanboi, I persuaded him to go with a 9850BE system. 3 years later, an E8xxx system with it's dual cores is positively outdated whereas that 9850BE clocked to 3ghz is still up there playing the latest shit, near Phenom 2 levels.
Perhaps history will repeat itself here and AMD release some uber iterations of Bulldozer. At least I hope to god it does.