Upgrade/price point - wait? (fr:E6550+DDR2 > ?+ddr3)

To be honest i haven't kept up with the hardware news much in the last couple of years, i've been pretty happy with my current setup ~

however, I recently snagged a couple of decent SLI vid cards on the cheap, and was considering going to a DDR mobo. Scanning over the articles here though, I begin to wonder if it's really worth it to do so, i've talked with friends who've had issues with DDR3.. has any of that been worked out?

Also, if I was to go to a DDR3 board, i'd have too look at getting a new proc, which i'm not really against but i've been pretty happy with my oc'd E6550. Is there something on the market before the price curve "blows up" that's worth grabbing? It doesn't have to be intel, but once the Core 2 hit the market I pretty much jumped ship on AMD.

by curve I mean price scaling: (new egg as of now) :
BX80601975 - $999 (yeah no)
BX80601950 - $569 - core i7, l2 4x256, l3 8mb (still probably not)
BX80569Q9550S - - core 2q - l2 12M (closer, quad worthwhile? maybe)

not gonna go down forever.. but you get the point.. i'd rather not spend 350 for a proc - and there are some core i7's around 290 range.. question is, am I going to notice a big enough difference updating the proc from my core 2 to bother? or should I wait a bit longer.

what I have been doing: gaming (don't have much time for it, elec engineering student..) - currently playing dragon ages, might pick up borderlands.. System will need to handle forms of CAD (drafting tools)..