I can't imagine languishing with a 2007 era machine until I have enough money for a full overhaul.
This got me thinking about video card upgrading. Let's say you've got a PC with a PCI-e 1.0 slot. Are brand new cards still compatible? Would they have much of a hit to their framerate on the older bus?
I realize with the older slot comes older CPUs and slower memory, but aside from that.
Which is great...if I can do what basically turns into a full rebuild with one of those. Like I said, I don't have much to work with money wise and never will. If I can save up $30/mo it's a major accomplishment.
I can't imagine languishing with a 2007 era machine until I have enough money for a full overhaul.
As an aside to the actual point of this thread, I think I can safely say this is the primary reason I got out of the whole "enthusiast" part of computers. It's simply impossible to stay in the game without spending a decent amount of money every 2-3 years. Sure, you can read and read about the newest parts and what they do, but its completely unfulfilling. Unlike most other hobbies, being a PC enthusiast requires an inordinate amount of time and money to even stay tangentially involved.
I would argue that if you do it "right" the first time, the upgrade cycle is more like every 2-3 years for GPUs and every 3-5 for everything else. Hell, every 3-5 for the whole thing if you wait to go big once, rather than throwing very incremental updates $100 at a time.
I would argue that if you do it "right" the first time, the upgrade cycle is more like every 2-3 years for GPUs and every 3-5 for everything else. Hell, every 3-5 for the whole thing if you wait to go big once, rather than throwing very incremental updates $100 at a time.
True facts
I spent around $1800 on my current PC (3 monitors included and a free 6950)
But, it will last me 3 years at least. Now you don't have to spend $250 on a case like I did, but I won't need to upgrade that next cycle either. Honestly, I can't see any "upgrades" for my PC for a long, long time, as software is still behind what I have now.
I would argue that if you do it "right" the first time, the upgrade cycle is more like every 2-3 years for GPUs and every 3-5 for everything else. Hell, every 3-5 for the whole thing if you wait to go big once, rather than throwing very incremental updates $100 at a time.
We did do things right in 2008, and this machine is starting to show its age. The problem is, if you want to stay up to date, you have to be able to drop ~$500 every 5 years to get everything up to snuff after your initial big investment. And eventually you're going to be behind again. The fact that you have to be willing to drop a big upgrade every 3 or 4 years to stay relevant is what bothers me. Even spending $300 that often is a huge deterrent.
I can't think of another hobby I have that requires me to constantly pump money into it quite like computer technology does.
It only 'requires' it if you want to use the latest and greatest technology (mostly referring to latest generation games here). For the vast majority of things, upgrading from that 3-4 year old build wouldn't be necessary. Hell, I can look at my Steam list now and probably pick 50 games that would run just fine on your hardware.
Also, I would argue that many hobbies require a consistent investment and at the rate of $300 over 3 yrs, pc upgrades are actually quite small in comparison.
Forgot to add that I'm all for more budget friendly hardware that can run more and more advanced software, but there will likely always be a bleeding edge and it will always be expensive.
We did do things right in 2008, and this machine is starting to show its age. The problem is, if you want to stay up to date, you have to be able to drop ~$500 every 5 years to get everything up to snuff after your initial big investment. And eventually you're going to be behind again. The fact that you have to be willing to drop a big upgrade every 3 or 4 years to stay relevant is what bothers me. Even spending $300 that often is a huge deterrent.
I can't think of another hobby I have that requires me to constantly pump money into it quite like computer technology does.
put away $10 a month, and in 3 years you will have $360 for that PC upgrade. Planning, so hard.
I spent 9 months saving for my PC, and it still took another 4 months of buying parts here and there to complete it.
Hell, $20 a month and you'd have enough dosh for a blazing fast GPU, as well as new mobo/RAM/CPU.
0
BlackHawkBible music connoisseurThere's no place like 127.0.0.1Icrontian
edited August 2011
First specs.
Intel Q6600
ASUS Rampage Formula
2x 2GB OCZ ReaperX PC2 6400
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
I really want to play BF3 but supposedly and obviously my rig can't handle it. Would an upgrade to a Radeon 6800 or 6900 series be sufficient or do I pretty much have to upgrade my whole rig?
Intel Q6600
ASUS Rampage Formula
2x 2GB OCZ ReaperX PC2 6400
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
I really want to play BF3 but supposedly and obviously my rig can't handle it. Would an upgrade to a Radeon 6800 or 6900 series be sufficient or do I pretty much have to upgrade my whole rig?
That should do it. If you have the cash, go for a 6900 series, but a 6800 should do it.
put away $10 a month, and in 3 years you will have $360 for that PC upgrade. Planning, so hard.
I spent 9 months saving for my PC, and it still took another 4 months of buying parts here and there to complete it.
I currently can't save $10/mo. with any consistency. I understand the planning aspect, but in 3 years I'll be looking at a 7 year old system that's running on a C2D, 2GB of ram and a 9800 GT.
I guess what I'm looking for is a little bit more affordable performance. I know that bang for buck isn't bad these days, but it still borders on the unapproachable for what I think is a reasonable cost per upgrade cycle. If I could consistently spend $300 every three years for the ability to play 95% of current generation games/current gen software, I would certainly do it. Unfortunately that's not the case at this time.
As a follow up, I am going to try and build a decent rig on a ridiculous budget ($400 shipped to my door). I'll be posting here and it will require time looking for deals and sales, but I think it can be done.
As a follow up, I am going to try and build a decent rig on a ridiculous budget ($400 shipped to my door). I'll be posting here and it will require time looking for deals and sales, but I think it can be done.
Do you plan to use any existing components (case, PSU, etc)? If so, you've got a very real chance of success.
find a used q6600 for < $100, overclock it to ~4ghz, upgrade to 4 (or 8 gb of ram) and buy a video card with whatever money you have left. Make sure your PSU can handle it.
Do you plan to use any existing components (case, PSU, etc)? If so, you've got a very real chance of success.
I have a PSU and a potential case, but it's looking awful. I'll have to buy everything else new. Motherboard, CPU, RAM, GPU, HDD, optical drive. All the old components I have are old school IDE. The only thing I won't be changing is my monitor, although I might have to, as the ones I have only support VGA.
If I'm going to upgrade (read: build new) my machine, I'm going to go somewhere I have the possibility to upgrade, so the AM3/Bulldozer compatible parts are looking like a good starting point.
This is just my opinion, but I'd probably go for a cheap upgrade that makes your current machine decent for gaming / whatever you want. You can pick up yesterday's high-end used parts pretty cheaply (a q6600 goes for ~$80 on ebay), and keep the majority of your current machine together. Assuming that your motherboard supports it, an overclocked Q6600 with a decent video card will make most games playable (if not quite pretty) for two years (imo). At that time your financial situation may have changed, and you can do a more extensive overhaul of the machine.
There's no guarantee that the low-end motherboard (and the rest of the system components) you can afford now will support the newest versions of processors due to new power requirements or needing a bios update that may or may not come (or something else) when you're ready to upgrade.
This is just my opinion, but I'd probably go for a cheap upgrade that makes your current machine decent for gaming / whatever you want. You can pick up yesterday's high-end used parts pretty cheaply (a q6600 goes for ~$80 on ebay), and keep the majority of your current machine together. Assuming that your motherboard supports it, an overclocked Q6600 with a decent video card will make most games playable (if not quite pretty) for two years (imo). At that time your financial situation may have changed, and you can do a more extensive overhaul of the machine.
There's no guarantee that the low-end motherboard (and the rest of the system components) you can afford now will support the newest versions of processors due to new power requirements or needing a bios update that may or may not come (or something else) when you're ready to upgrade.
The machine I'm currently using isn't really "mine". It's my wife's, I've been using it for about 2 years now. I would like to have my own machine again. Previous machine has a 939 motherboard...so yeah.
As for my financial situation, that will change sometime around 2025 when I've gotten a few raises and paid down/off some of my loans.
This G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB DDR3-1866 article mentions that 1866 will only overclock to 2133 ...but by limitation of the 1155 not the ram itself. So my question is, do the latest AMD processors limit bandwidth the same or similar? I guess my real question is ...will 2000 be the limit worthwhile of bulldozer?
And even if the limit is lower ...when will it begin to matter? In other words ...what speed should I shoot for to ensure that I don't shortchange myself on only valuable bandwidth?
Am I making sense ...I'll be back after I flip the grill ...excuse me.
"First, the memory multipliers on P67 motherboards essentially top out at 2133MHz for selected speeds. This why we are seeing memory kits being released up to this particular speed. Lower speeds such as 1600MHz will work just fine, but will limit you from achieving top performance because of the changes in overclocking.
Since the CPU multiplier now essentially controls and limits overclocking, the motherboard's bus (BCLK) extremely limited wiggle room. Unlike previous sockets and chipsets that allowed considerable increases in BCLK for overclocking and therefore higher memory speeds, P67/Z68 and Sandy Bridge doesn't. What this means is that memory overclocking is now essentially unnecessary. Boosting the memory speeds by boosting the bus is no longer possible.
So, the only way to "overclock" memory to any meaningful degree with P67/Z68 motherboards is for the modules to be able to run at one speed level higher than its rated speed. For example, a 1600MHz could run at 1866MHz, while 1866MHz sticks could run at 2133MHz. As a result, our overclocking tests are now limited to seeing if that can happen."
I guess my question really is ...when will I stop seeing a benefit on memory bandwidth with the bulldozer? Anyone care to guess? Thrax can you comment at all?
Will 1600 only oc to 1866 as in the article above? 1866 to 2133? etc.
1866 is acheivable on FM1 (and presumably AM3+ with a Zambezi CPU) without overclocking because the memory controller (integrated on the CPU) supports it. 2133 will likely require an FSB overclock.
1866 is acheivable on FM1 (and presumably AM3+ with a Zambezi CPU) without overclocking because the memory controller (integrated on the CPU) supports it. 2133 will likely require an FSB overclock.
This is well understood. The on-chip controller has always benefitted me in the work that I do. This is why I am concerned about this ...although seemingly not making sense.
Fortunately I won't have a "FSB" to be concerned with!
Good timing, I'm actually curious what I should be looking for in RAM as well.
I'm currently comparing 1090T and i2500k setups of Mobo, CPU, and RAM. I'm having a difficult time choosing RAM that will allow me a maximum overclock, but at the same time doesn't break the bank. There seem to be a lot of 8GB options in the $65 range with identical specs (1.5v, 9 CAS, etc.) but is that what I should be looking at?. Any guidance on brand and speeds, now that OCZ is out of that realm?
Good timing, I'm actually curious what I should be looking for in RAM as well.
I'm currently comparing 1090T and i2500k setups of Mobo, CPU, and RAM. I'm having a difficult time choosing RAM that will allow me a maximum overclock, but at the same time doesn't break the bank. There seem to be a lot of 8GB options in the $65 range with identical specs (1.5v, 9 CAS, etc.) but is that what I should be looking at?. Any guidance on brand and speeds, now that OCZ is out of that realm?
Things I look for based on my two decades of experience:
Lower CAS is better, regardless of clock specs. Why? It's likely to permit much higher clocks when you start loosening up the timing. (I've taken Samsung CAS2.5 ECC Reg'd PC133's to 200MHz+ @ CAS3.)
Voltage range - higher top end is generally better, but when the default voltage is JEDEC standard or lower, that's more thermal headroom typically. I'd look for 1.55-1.75V range on DDR3-2000MHz.
Cooling is important. One of the reasons I liked OCZ was because the IHSes were effective. Heat can and will kill memory, and most cases don't provide much direct airflow for it.
Brand is largely irrelevant these days. Look at the IC manufacturer; almost everyone builds to IC manufacturer reference DIMM. Personally, I prefer Samsung and Hynix. Hynix tends to overclock better in some situations, Samsung in others.
You Can't Go Wrong With Kingston. People kvetch an unbelievable amount about Kingston, but they are one of the largest manufacturers of aftermarket DIMMs in the world. They are the company that sued the manufacturers when they claimed installing more memory in a system voided the warranty. They know RAM, and they are good at it.
Ignore Everything On Newegg. Seriously. I find specification errors regularly, and the reviews are filled with people who are definitely NOT technical experts and are blaming the wrong part continuously. Or claiming memory is DOA or defective when it's not compatible. My favorite are the ones giving one egg reviews because they ordered DDR3-1600+ for a Socket 775 P45 and aren't getting 1600MHz+ by default.
My situation: my current rig was built in 2005, when the AMD X2 (socket 939) processors just came out (I have a X2 3800). But, the system is both aged, and dead. As of a month ago, it won't POST at all. Sad face. I have a ASUS G73JH laptop to hold me over, and while it's nice for gaming, it's unstable and unreliable (frequent blue screens). So I need a new rig, sooner the better. Also, I'm wanting an AMD setup. Sorry, Intel. :P
What I have now to use/salvage: Case:Sentey Burton full-size tower GPU:Radeon HD 6870 and/or AMD FirePro V5900 (recently won the FirePro) Primary HDD: Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM 150GB (good enough for me) Other stuff: optical drives, X-Fi sound card, peripherals, etc
Question 1: Buy now or wait a little; when should I upgrade?
Every hardware type has big generation-level updates, and just minor updates. Are there any MAJOR generational updates coming soon? I'd hate to buy now and later learn an update was just days away. The one I KNOW about is AMD's "Bulldozer" aka Zambezi that should be shipping Sept 19 -- I want one, and I can wait for that. Anything else?
Question 2: RAM compatibility?
It's been so long since I bought RAM, I don't remember how to tell what RAM I can get. I assume I start with the AM3+ motherboard I pick out (AM3+ to go with the Zambezi CPU) and see what it supports... right? I'll need a bucket of RAM, as I work work with content creation packages, all open simultaneously (Photoshop, Flash, plus a bajillion tabs in Firefox, etc). So I'll need to make sure the 8GB or whatever I can afford will work. How do I ensure this? Do I still have to buy 'kits' of RAM so that they work in dual-channel or whatever? That's always confused me.
Question 3: Radeon or FirePro?
So I was planning on using a single Radeon HD 6870... but last week at SIGGRAPH, I won a FirePro V5900. So I'm conflicted. Ideally I would build 2 rigs, one as a creation content workstation, the other for general use and gaming. But I can't afford that.
About my needs: when I game, I'd like to play any game at acceptable settings (I don't need bleeding-edge fps, just good enough). When I work, like mentioned above, I use the Adobe lineup (Photoshop, etc), and occasionally a 3D modeling/animation product (may use more often in the future).
Thrax, what would you recommend? I know the gist of FirePro cards, great for number-crunching on content creation and 3D software, but not meant for gaming. But can that V5900 run DX11 games "good enough"? If not, should I just use the HD 6870 for now and hold onto that FirePro for later? Or... can I just swap out the card as needed (like if I have to do a major amount of video or 3D rendering one night), or do they each have separate driver packages that would conflict?
That's my main three. I'll leave it at that for now. I'll ask more as questions pop up.
One: AMD is coming soon and that's what you want, so might as well wait.
Two: Buy however much DDR3-1600 you require. If your motherboard has 4 DIMM slots, you can reasonably get 4x4GB sticks (16GB). Maybe you'll get that in a single kit, or maybe you'll buy a pair of 2x4GB kits. Kits are solely for convenience.
Sounds like the new CPU line is the main big thing. I won't sweat anything else. Besides, new products are released all the time. Can't cry about missing something minor.
Regarding RAM, 16GB would be tits. I'll look into your 4x4GB DDR3-1600 recommendation. If it's too much, I'll probably go with 8GB.
Finally, I added a 3rd question: Radeon vs FirePro. Your thoughts?
Comments
This got me thinking about video card upgrading. Let's say you've got a PC with a PCI-e 1.0 slot. Are brand new cards still compatible? Would they have much of a hit to their framerate on the older bus?
I realize with the older slot comes older CPUs and slower memory, but aside from that.
I would argue that if you do it "right" the first time, the upgrade cycle is more like every 2-3 years for GPUs and every 3-5 for everything else. Hell, every 3-5 for the whole thing if you wait to go big once, rather than throwing very incremental updates $100 at a time.
True facts
I spent around $1800 on my current PC (3 monitors included and a free 6950)
But, it will last me 3 years at least. Now you don't have to spend $250 on a case like I did, but I won't need to upgrade that next cycle either. Honestly, I can't see any "upgrades" for my PC for a long, long time, as software is still behind what I have now.
We did do things right in 2008, and this machine is starting to show its age. The problem is, if you want to stay up to date, you have to be able to drop ~$500 every 5 years to get everything up to snuff after your initial big investment. And eventually you're going to be behind again. The fact that you have to be willing to drop a big upgrade every 3 or 4 years to stay relevant is what bothers me. Even spending $300 that often is a huge deterrent.
I can't think of another hobby I have that requires me to constantly pump money into it quite like computer technology does.
Also, I would argue that many hobbies require a consistent investment and at the rate of $300 over 3 yrs, pc upgrades are actually quite small in comparison.
put away $10 a month, and in 3 years you will have $360 for that PC upgrade. Planning, so hard.
I spent 9 months saving for my PC, and it still took another 4 months of buying parts here and there to complete it.
Intel Q6600
ASUS Rampage Formula
2x 2GB OCZ ReaperX PC2 6400
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
I really want to play BF3 but supposedly and obviously my rig can't handle it. Would an upgrade to a Radeon 6800 or 6900 series be sufficient or do I pretty much have to upgrade my whole rig?
This is good news, Black Hawk has the same base system as me.
I currently can't save $10/mo. with any consistency. I understand the planning aspect, but in 3 years I'll be looking at a 7 year old system that's running on a C2D, 2GB of ram and a 9800 GT.
I guess what I'm looking for is a little bit more affordable performance. I know that bang for buck isn't bad these days, but it still borders on the unapproachable for what I think is a reasonable cost per upgrade cycle. If I could consistently spend $300 every three years for the ability to play 95% of current generation games/current gen software, I would certainly do it. Unfortunately that's not the case at this time.
I have a PSU and a potential case, but it's looking awful. I'll have to buy everything else new. Motherboard, CPU, RAM, GPU, HDD, optical drive. All the old components I have are old school IDE. The only thing I won't be changing is my monitor, although I might have to, as the ones I have only support VGA.
If I'm going to upgrade (read: build new) my machine, I'm going to go somewhere I have the possibility to upgrade, so the AM3/Bulldozer compatible parts are looking like a good starting point.
There's no guarantee that the low-end motherboard (and the rest of the system components) you can afford now will support the newest versions of processors due to new power requirements or needing a bios update that may or may not come (or something else) when you're ready to upgrade.
The machine I'm currently using isn't really "mine". It's my wife's, I've been using it for about 2 years now. I would like to have my own machine again. Previous machine has a 939 motherboard...so yeah.
As for my financial situation, that will change sometime around 2025 when I've gotten a few raises and paid down/off some of my loans.
And even if the limit is lower ...when will it begin to matter? In other words ...what speed should I shoot for to ensure that I don't shortchange myself on only valuable bandwidth?
Am I making sense ...I'll be back after I flip the grill ...excuse me.
"First, the memory multipliers on P67 motherboards essentially top out at 2133MHz for selected speeds. This why we are seeing memory kits being released up to this particular speed. Lower speeds such as 1600MHz will work just fine, but will limit you from achieving top performance because of the changes in overclocking.
Since the CPU multiplier now essentially controls and limits overclocking, the motherboard's bus (BCLK) extremely limited wiggle room. Unlike previous sockets and chipsets that allowed considerable increases in BCLK for overclocking and therefore higher memory speeds, P67/Z68 and Sandy Bridge doesn't. What this means is that memory overclocking is now essentially unnecessary. Boosting the memory speeds by boosting the bus is no longer possible.
So, the only way to "overclock" memory to any meaningful degree with P67/Z68 motherboards is for the modules to be able to run at one speed level higher than its rated speed. For example, a 1600MHz could run at 1866MHz, while 1866MHz sticks could run at 2133MHz. As a result, our overclocking tests are now limited to seeing if that can happen."
I guess my question really is ...when will I stop seeing a benefit on memory bandwidth with the bulldozer? Anyone care to guess? Thrax can you comment at all?
Will 1600 only oc to 1866 as in the article above? 1866 to 2133? etc.
Will I be satisfied with 1866 oc'ed to whatever?
This is well understood. The on-chip controller has always benefitted me in the work that I do. This is why I am concerned about this ...although seemingly not making sense.
Fortunately I won't have a "FSB" to be concerned with!
I'm currently comparing 1090T and i2500k setups of Mobo, CPU, and RAM. I'm having a difficult time choosing RAM that will allow me a maximum overclock, but at the same time doesn't break the bank. There seem to be a lot of 8GB options in the $65 range with identical specs (1.5v, 9 CAS, etc.) but is that what I should be looking at?. Any guidance on brand and speeds, now that OCZ is out of that realm?
Things I look for based on my two decades of experience:
Lower CAS is better, regardless of clock specs. Why? It's likely to permit much higher clocks when you start loosening up the timing. (I've taken Samsung CAS2.5 ECC Reg'd PC133's to 200MHz+ @ CAS3.)
Voltage range - higher top end is generally better, but when the default voltage is JEDEC standard or lower, that's more thermal headroom typically. I'd look for 1.55-1.75V range on DDR3-2000MHz.
Cooling is important. One of the reasons I liked OCZ was because the IHSes were effective. Heat can and will kill memory, and most cases don't provide much direct airflow for it.
Brand is largely irrelevant these days. Look at the IC manufacturer; almost everyone builds to IC manufacturer reference DIMM. Personally, I prefer Samsung and Hynix. Hynix tends to overclock better in some situations, Samsung in others.
You Can't Go Wrong With Kingston. People kvetch an unbelievable amount about Kingston, but they are one of the largest manufacturers of aftermarket DIMMs in the world. They are the company that sued the manufacturers when they claimed installing more memory in a system voided the warranty. They know RAM, and they are good at it.
Ignore Everything On Newegg. Seriously. I find specification errors regularly, and the reviews are filled with people who are definitely NOT technical experts and are blaming the wrong part continuously. Or claiming memory is DOA or defective when it's not compatible. My favorite are the ones giving one egg reviews because they ordered DDR3-1600+ for a Socket 775 P45 and aren't getting 1600MHz+ by default.
My situation: my current rig was built in 2005, when the AMD X2 (socket 939) processors just came out (I have a X2 3800). But, the system is both aged, and dead. As of a month ago, it won't POST at all. Sad face. I have a ASUS G73JH laptop to hold me over, and while it's nice for gaming, it's unstable and unreliable (frequent blue screens). So I need a new rig, sooner the better. Also, I'm wanting an AMD setup. Sorry, Intel. :P
What I have now to use/salvage:
Case: Sentey Burton full-size tower
GPU: Radeon HD 6870 and/or AMD FirePro V5900 (recently won the FirePro)
Primary HDD: Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM 150GB (good enough for me)
Other stuff: optical drives, X-Fi sound card, peripherals, etc
Question 1: Buy now or wait a little; when should I upgrade?
Every hardware type has big generation-level updates, and just minor updates. Are there any MAJOR generational updates coming soon? I'd hate to buy now and later learn an update was just days away. The one I KNOW about is AMD's "Bulldozer" aka Zambezi that should be shipping Sept 19 -- I want one, and I can wait for that. Anything else?
Question 2: RAM compatibility?
It's been so long since I bought RAM, I don't remember how to tell what RAM I can get. I assume I start with the AM3+ motherboard I pick out (AM3+ to go with the Zambezi CPU) and see what it supports... right? I'll need a bucket of RAM, as I work work with content creation packages, all open simultaneously (Photoshop, Flash, plus a bajillion tabs in Firefox, etc). So I'll need to make sure the 8GB or whatever I can afford will work. How do I ensure this? Do I still have to buy 'kits' of RAM so that they work in dual-channel or whatever? That's always confused me.
Question 3: Radeon or FirePro?
So I was planning on using a single Radeon HD 6870... but last week at SIGGRAPH, I won a FirePro V5900. So I'm conflicted. Ideally I would build 2 rigs, one as a creation content workstation, the other for general use and gaming. But I can't afford that.
About my needs: when I game, I'd like to play any game at acceptable settings (I don't need bleeding-edge fps, just good enough). When I work, like mentioned above, I use the Adobe lineup (Photoshop, etc), and occasionally a 3D modeling/animation product (may use more often in the future).
Thrax, what would you recommend? I know the gist of FirePro cards, great for number-crunching on content creation and 3D software, but not meant for gaming. But can that V5900 run DX11 games "good enough"? If not, should I just use the HD 6870 for now and hold onto that FirePro for later? Or... can I just swap out the card as needed (like if I have to do a major amount of video or 3D rendering one night), or do they each have separate driver packages that would conflict?
That's my main three. I'll leave it at that for now. I'll ask more as questions pop up.
Two: Buy however much DDR3-1600 you require. If your motherboard has 4 DIMM slots, you can reasonably get 4x4GB sticks (16GB). Maybe you'll get that in a single kit, or maybe you'll buy a pair of 2x4GB kits. Kits are solely for convenience.
Sounds like the new CPU line is the main big thing. I won't sweat anything else. Besides, new products are released all the time. Can't cry about missing something minor.
Regarding RAM, 16GB would be tits. I'll look into your 4x4GB DDR3-1600 recommendation. If it's too much, I'll probably go with 8GB.
Finally, I added a 3rd question: Radeon vs FirePro. Your thoughts?