......
X79 does not have SRT, correct? And nearly all of the IVB chips do (and Z68)? That is the primary feature I speak of... also, yes, it would have been expected for all of the SATA ports to be Gen 3 (like my lowly AMD 870 chipsets?) but I would say that is a nitpick and is not "behind" Z68.
I have used that feature in a number of builds with great results. I plan on using the SSD and mechanical in my sig for my games and desktop VMs and using a 128GB SSD for my main boot/app drive in the future. Without SRT that cannot happen... and what else am I going to use that little SSD for?