My system is looking a little long in to the tooth now and i am looking at upgrading my entire system save my hdd. I really mainly use my system for gaming which goes through to my 40" tv. I know at the moment Intel cpus are a head of AMD but i am looking for value for money but bearing in mind my pc use is pretty singular I don't need to add extraneous bells and whistles i am not going to use. I primarily use AMD GPU's (mainly out of habit and the fact for my price range they seem to be the most competitive.) I couldn't honestly tell you whether the majority of my games are Nvidia biased or AMD. I also have very little desire to use a multi gpu set up so having tons of PCIE slots is not necessary. I have to take the plunge as a complete overhaul is the only real option.
Would you consider a mini-itx build? You can get a Bit-Fenix Prodigy, decent socket 1155 mobo, throw an I3-3220 CPU in there and an AMD 7850 without breaking the bank and it'll look cool sitting next to your TV with the rest of your AV setup. Quite a capable gaming machine, too. You can re-use your modular PSU for this as well. You can also stick something like a 3570k in there if you want the high end gaming and OC'ing power and don't mind the price.
i have been mulling it over i like the Silverstone HTPC cases like the LC16 or maybe a Sugo. Have already used LC16 for a build i didn't for my dad. It would also be nice to get rid of my Stacker 830 case which takes up much space.
I would say intel is your best bet but I would wait until socket 1150 (haswell). Although there is marginal performance benefit over ivy bridge it means when you come to a similar situation in the future there will be something to upgrade to. +1 on Neogumbercules as a 7850 is the best mid range card by a mille (if you are looking at a small htpc style case you can get low profile ones as well).
Where have you heard this? (Not that I'm doubting - just that Haswell is probably going to be my next upgrade and I'm eager for information!)
There was a leaked data sheet with all the new names which were basically 0.1 ghz higher compared to the ivy bridge equivalent. It was an article a while back I think. Edit:found it
so if i were to do it now something along the lines of; Mobo; Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WIFI Mini-ITX CPU: as advised i3-3220 Ram: Corsair Memory Desktop 16GB. I would keep my PSU, opti-drives & HDD and would likely include an SSD for the OS.
