Wow, that's some post for a budget gaming rig thread :-)
I've just ordered an 860k for a mini ITX build. I'm planning on installing Win 8.1 and OpenSuse 13.2; I'll sort out some benchmarks when I have the time.
^Super interesting, great post! Do you think AMD's new 86x is going to shake things up and revitalize their business? In the latest Tek episode Logan definitely hinted that he has heard some insiders churning the rumor-mill. Just curious to see what you think.
Also, do you think the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is approaching? Now that we have chromebooks, how long until a smart and fast Linux distro starts pushing out their own integrated hardware/OS solution as a Mac/PC killer solution? The only thing I've seen so far are these kind of pathetic and overpriced Ubuntu sets, that basically are expensive botnets.
In my opinion, there will always be another target audience for AMD as opposed to Intel, whatever AMD or Intel come up with. I think hybrid architectures are very interesting, and I've been experimenting with them in my company for two years or so, and have invested heavily in them, and that has brought quite a lot of business, so I know for a fact that there are many companies very interested in different aspects thereof.
I think the "year of the linux desktop" will never come. In fact, back in the early days of linux, before the Millennium Bug was a thing (because that's what made the world switch to linux instead of commercial UNIX systems, OS/2, and even Windows NT, the damage that Microsoft did to the enterprise world will never be forgotten!), linux was a typical desktop operating system. It was designed for desktop PC's, and the server or embedded applications were not the core functionality in the beginning. The only full featured GNU/Linux distribution that I know that is even available in a (pseudo-)real time version, is SuSE, yet there are maybe dozens of new commercial real time linux-based applications released on the market every single day.
The same will happen on the consumer computing market: there will be a lot of linux-based proprietary systems, software consoles like dedicated Android versions, SteamOS, hypervizors like the XBox One, etc... but very few full fledged GNU/Linux distros that are distributed on a large scale in the consumer market.
This is already happening you know: Google has CrOS, Valve has SteamOS, Amazon will soon come out with a proprietary linux edition for desktops, because Google has it, and Baidu indirectly has it also (Ubuntu Kylin). Microsoft is just not a big player any more. Google, Amazon, Baidu, and maybe also Yahoo and Facebook, those are the big players now, those are the ones that will bring Linux to the consumer desktops and laptops, but they will bring software consoles based on linux to the masses, because the consumer market has never ever since MS-DOS got anything else shoved down their piehole except software consoles: from GUI Shells like Ashton-Tate's Framework came software consoles like MacOS, the very first ever GUI software console for mass consumption, followed by Windows 95 (Windows 3.11 actually was not that much of a software console, it was late to the party and not perfect, but it actually was a pretty honest product, a GUI shell on MS-DOS, that wasn't really limiting what you could do with the PC, it was not a software console).
The issue has always been the same: you can't fool a knowledgeable customer! With open source, at least we stand a fighting chance to provide enough information to at least a larger part of the customer pool...
I wouldnt say that system76 machines are overpriced ubuntu botnets. They fit into a specific market and are actually a very good system for the money. Especially if you look at the laptops.
As for a Distro that has it's own integrated system? Linux Mint has Mint boxes.