Question about 9850 BE

Hi, new here so first post here goes:

I am looking into building a new rig this summer and have one major concern. First I plan on waiting till next week to make sure that the new ATI cards at least semi-live up to expectations, an dmy intention to to get a 4870 and eventuallt get another one to crossfire (maybe even at the same time, but that is my intention).

My problem is with the CPU side. I would like to save the moeny on motherboard and RAM (DDR2 versus DDR3) and go for the Phenom 9850 BE. But am really concerned that I will be CPU limiting my system, wasting the moeny I am spending on my GPUs. I would obviously like to wait for the new Deneb cores, but that could easily wind up being 2009, and I haven't heard of any plans of more 65nm chips from AMD.

My question would be, intending to get bettter cooling for it (not water, but something better then what it comes with) and hopefully getting a close to 2.9-3.0GHz range, is my concern about CPU limiting my system valid. And is it worth the $350+ more ($100 more on the mobo, $50 on the CPU, and $150+ for DDR3 RAM) worth it to get one of the newer Intel CPUs (Q9300)?

I would like to keep my budget under $1500, and it seems that my only options are either crossfiring with the 9850 BE or going with one chip and an Intel CPU (unless there are good boards I don't know about that use DDR2 memory and support at least 2x-crossfire though I would be more happy with having tri-quad-crossfire potential).

Thanks so much for your help!