Whoa......
My current build is maxed out at 24 gigs of ram, I have an Intel 320 SSD drive and currently its the Marvell controller on the Sabertooth X58 that has an issue with most if not all sata3 SSD drives. Flexibility is the same as upgradeablity and unfortunately there isn't much on the market for upgrading the LGA 1366 processors other than the updated X58 boards which uses a so-so sata3 controller.
2nd, cost is an issue here, which is why I would prefer to just upgrade my motherboard. But, only if the so-so Marvell controller's lack of performance is negligible in comparison to the sata3 controllers on the Z68 & X79. I'm sure it performs better than sata2, but how much better considering the under performance of the marvell controller.
3rd, Z68 vs X79? Roughly the same price for chip & motherboards, unless your looking at the under $150 crowd, but those boards limit me from a flexibility standpoint. Upgrading from X58 to that Z68 board only increases my ram by 8 gigs, which is small potatoes when you already have 24gigs, IMO. X79 is more expensive, but has a lot more going for it that justifies it's price.
4th, DDR3 1333MHz does fine as that's whats running with my 920 currently. But, if I were upgrading to Sandy Bridge-E, I would be getting DDR3 1600 anyway and it's not that much cheaper.
I will thank you Laircouk for pointing to the Z68\LGA1155 platform I didn't realize that it too uses the new AVX instruction set. But, if I have to purchase a new processor, I might as well go with the newest one, since the processor price are neck and neck, and the newer processor has a better chipset by far in the X79. I just don't see the value in the Z68 with the X79 being out there.
My question still remains..........does the AVX instructions yield better performance, 20-40% better, than the older Core i7s or previous generation of processors i.e. P4\Core2 processors?
Also, does X58 with sata3 perform at an acceptable level over sata2? and is the performance difference between X58 marvell sata3 & the newer x79 sata3 controllers, negligible or noticeable slower?