It is exceptional value, and I'd wager that people that got lucky and have been using Sandy Bridge would do well off for years again with the 1600, while getting a serious boost. And for strict budget people (say ones that got Phenom II or FX for cheap prices) can likewise buy into a much newer platform and see a lot of improvement.
But there's potential it could get even better, as the FM4 platform will probably be around for a while, so in 3 years time, there's a good possibility that you could spend just another $200 or so and get significantly better performance. I don't recall if AMD has said how long they plan on using FM4, but I gather that a lot of things are on the CPU (as far as memory support, PCIe lanes, etc)? So would it potentially be possible that AMD could release FM4 compatible CPUs with maybe quad channel memory, or at least more PCI-e lanes and not requiring new boards (assuming of course that your board has the PCI-e connectors and 4 memory slots)? Would the Thunderbolt compatible stuff also be something that could just be on the CPU (so as long as you have, isn't it USB-C port you could get that)?
Another chip that I'd like to see, would be basically a 1600 (with all that it offers) with an integrated GPU. Even a fairly weak one (that is more about offering media features and handling the display output control). That probably wouldn't be until the 7nm stuff, but would be nice if they'd maybe put some of that on the CPU, and then when USB-C becomes standard and we can do video out that way, we could get headless video cards (where we could then get either single slot ones that could still vent outside the case). Especially if mGPU comes back.
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