RE: Barrel life
It won't really matter if the barrel is a heavy or light contour. I have rifles in several of these calibers.
The 6.5x55 is an old swedish mauser I have no idea how many rounds that barrel has seen in it's 90+years of life but the riflings in it look like they were made yesterday.
The .243 has seen about 1,000 rounds and is still what I'd call new.
My .223 rifle, which I compete with, is on its second barrel. The first one was replaced at about 15,000 rounds. It looked fairly good but accuracy had fallen to where I could shoot better groups than it could hold. The current barrel has about 2000 through it and it is aas good or better than I am.
What little I know about 6.5x.284 is that I's a pretty fast round and might fall into the "barrel burner" category so I can't really help much with that one.