Motherboard costs should be the same as s1156 boards. Remember, overall the transition *ISN'T* that big. The GPU gets on-die, the clock gen comes off the mobo, but otherwise the mobo's are gonna be almost identical to P55 et al boards.
You're gonna be waiting for nearly a year (from now) for s2011 then.
8 core BD is 4 modules. Until we see how well they perform against s1155, I wouldn't make any pro *or* con predictions. BD could be a flop and Intel delays further. Or it could kick Sandy's ass 7 days a week and twice on Sunday. Until we know, we don't know.
Yeah, that's how I'm starting to feel as well. I'm more excited about Sandy Bridge than I am about Bulldozer. One would think that there is going to be a performance penalty in having the "shared" cores that BD uses. I just think that AMD is playing catch-up whereas Intel is continuing to build upon their lead and dominating the market.
I'm expecting those parts to cost $750 including a good heat sink, and to $250 back on my current parts. Could be worse. I'll use my current supporting gear, as the PSU and the rest are easily enough for them, having been purchased for a i7-920/GTX280 build that lasted a month before I had to sell.
X58 is a server platform, the same as s2011. Long validation times, long support times, and higher margins. Different needs, different delivery. Same reason for lower clocks and more cores on s1366 vs s1156.
