[citation][nom]alextheblue[/nom]AM3 is/was much better than 775. Take a system originally equipped with a Socket 775 Pentium 4 and try upgrading to a Socket 775 Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. With AM3 99% of the time you can flash the BIOS and run the latest AM3+ chips. With early Socket 775 systems 99% of the time you're f'd.In other words, you have to look beyond how many years a Socket has been in service, and look at whether or not it actually supports chips released later.[/citation]
And the last one, AM2+ was the same way. I got my 780G mobo when they first came out, along with a dual core 4600+ from a friend. I ran that and then later, among other upgrades, a 720 BE x3. I never really do entire new builds just get a new part every now and again - whatever seems to need it most. Once I literally just got the HAF 922 I'm using now and made no other changes.
The only reason I'm even on an AM3+ now (Crosshair V) is because I saw what CPU/mobos were going for on ebay so now I have a thuban six core. I'm about to sell the resulting extra stuff and some other stuff I got basically for free and come out even after the dust settles besides RAM. I was originally planning on getting a haswell cpu and mobo/ram later in the year, and I still might. But it would be fairly tempting to just add whatever CPU amd comes out with next to this.
Point is, for awhile now AMD has been making it really easy to do drop in upgrades. Compare the multiple intel sockets that have come out during the twilight years of am2+/the beginning of am3 which are already dead. I'm certain that when haswell will also have its own socket, even with how recent ivy bridge was.