Looking for a futureproof socket / FM2+ already dead ?!

[GradualFailureRecovery]

When I say futureproof I mean I am counting dirt cheap upgrades.
Sort question: Does buying into AM1 make sense in the long run or is this another trap ? Is there an Intel alternative to AM1 ?

Long version, (prooves I'm really confused):
I'm not a gamer, so AMD's APUs sound awesome, given that you can upgrade the CPU and GPU in one move, and really like the fact that this "on-board" version will be performance wise comparable to a somewhat older external GPU. I'm not necessarily and AMD fan, but I really really hate Celerons, and last time I tried to pick "the right CPU" the AMD x2 5050e looked like a really smart choice. (65nm). Something came up and I never made the purchase after actually investing weeks in understanding the market.

Now AM2 is totally defunct, and I was surprised to learn that since then there was an AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, FM2 and an FM2+ socket with AM1 being the newest. FM1 is dead as it was replaced by FM2, but if you want compatibility you have to go FM2+, yet it already looks like I'll be stuck there too unless I go with AM1 and even then they might actually just make a few 28 nm cpu's for that and then go to AM1+... all this while intel is at 14nm?

I also have the feeling that they role out the same slightly modified CPU's since two-three years now, yet they change sockets like socks. Not cool.

From what I read, If I want to avoid Celeron class performance, I'll have to go with A8 or A10-s. Yet that's the maximum AMD offers for FM2+. Will they ever make something for this socket that would justifiy an upgrade from there ? Given that they are already working on AM1 I doubt it. This would be my choice currently. I could slowly go from an A4 to an A10 from ebay someday. But in a couple of years my PC would be out of date and there'd be no way to upgrade to an i7 like performance. I have an impression that this isn't the case with Intel's 1155 or 1150. but I haven't wrapped my head around Intel yet.

I really don't want to go with the crowd and buy Intel and would like to show some love to AMD for pocket friendly prices and go wild with an APU, but, if you have like 2 cpus per socket and one of them works with certain chipsets only, I'm sort of out of options.

The AMD Athlon 5350 is the best out of the 4 processors currently available for AM1. With only 128 shaders on board and based on the now annoying 28 nm, it's not going to be amazing, but I trust will still outperform my 5050e or a Celeron. AMD must release something for this platform in the future right ? What are the chances this socket will see anything smaller than 28 nm ? Will this socket live for more than a few years ? Does anyone except me care ?

I am very tempted to buy this but maybe someone can tell me how intel makes more sense. Is there an Intel, USB 3.0, 6GB sata alternative to the above Athlon ?

PS. I would appreciate a link/chart/socket family tree or something for the Intel family. I tried to search but I couldn't find anything to give me an overview there. Maybe some of you know where to look.

Update. After reading more here on this site, I'm even more confused. What are the chances that FM2+ is going to be continued, when they have the AM1 which integrates more than just the GPU. It would have made sense to call this FM3 thus replace the FM2/+ and make some good APUs for it. AM3+ is too old to invest in. Yet AM1 seems to stay capped at 2 GHz which despite 4 cores sounds like trouble. What are the plans for the FM2+ ? Is AM1 really stuck at 2GHz or will they throw out something at around 3 GHz some day ? Any hints, ideas ?

 

[GradualFailureRecovery]

I have reason to believe, Carrizo won't be out anytime soon. They'll make refreshed Kaveri's for the desktop and the Carrizo's that will be out for the netbooks. They did the same thing with AM1.(they reloaded the same Kabini cores for the desktop and gave the Beema's to the netbooks). It makes it look like they are stretching things out till Zen is out.

I also have reasons to believe AM3+ is actually safer than FM2+, because FM2+ might bottle-neck the compute-cores' GDDR and HSA empowered performance. Or something like that... FM1 and FM2 were short lived. FM2+ although backwards compatible, is also for just one generation right now. It might actually stay like that and something like FM2++ might come out. Maybe a BIOS update could sort that out though. I wasn't able to find any info to prove Carrizo will work on FM2+. It might. Even if it will, Carrizo might bring only 20% more and similar clockspeeds - because of possible scalability issues - so while perf/watt increases, the improvements are materializing in lower consumption mostly, which is awesome for netbooks. At least this is what I gathered on the net.

So despite linux kernel support and TrueAudio and HSA and other things (like $41) for a A4-6300 , to me it seems smarter to go with Intel's 1150 that will "tock" sooner and for which there isn't a performance cap... although I'll still have to do the math.

If Carrizo was out today for FM2+ with +20% performance over Kaveri, I would probably still take it, especially because it might support DDR4 and DDR3 - although maybe there'll be two versions, one for DDR3 and one for DDR4. But it probably won't.

If AMD had a roadmap that would be so cool.

So unless someone can still advocate going with FM2+ for some reason unknown to me... I'll probably pair that Pentium ($80) with an SSD and wait for Zen makes sense. I'm so "currioz" about what actually will happen in a few months though...

Local prices are currently skewed somehow. That's just another argument against AM1 which end up being even less worth it in comparison.

(Just mentioning that Googling for DDR4 actually sent me to this forum a couple of times, to threads also inquiring about future-proof-ness. I'm not alone at all.)

Sorry for not being coherent at all and thanks. I'll sleep on it.