Upgrade?

At the moment, I usually sit on an AMD Phenom II X6 workstation/server/gaming-rig. But I'm thinking of upgrading to AMDs Bulldozer Vishera "true" octa-core micro-architecture.

With an octa-core based CPU running under the hood, I'll be able to compute data-loads / -streams that will be more common in the time coming.

Not that more cores are absolutely necessary, nor instantly, but with coming gaming-consoles sporting custom octa-core chips, homebrew and the like will demand (more powerful, and in some cases, distributed) computing-power.

6 cores (hexa-core) running @ 3GHz is plenty enough for most tasks today, from mundane (simple 3D) flash-games to more comprehensive high-definition 3D gaming. But 2 extra cores and an extra GHz of clock-frequency will definitely raise the bar enough to postpone sluggishness and lag.