Will there be any payback for better ram

[HumblePie]

SB supports triple-GPU.

Uh, no it doesn't. It only support a single 16x PCIe 2.0 lane and nothing else. Trying to use more than one PCIe device means it has to use some form of division of bandwidth of that lane to the CPU. There are motherboards for SB that allow multiple GPU setup using the NF200 chip, but that doesn't change the bandwidth from the NF200 chip to the CPU at all. The NF200 chip allows three 16x PCIe 2.0 lanes to itself, but from there to the CPU, the NF200 chip has to do some work to get the info synced up for the CPU. Which means a lot of overhead latency.

Luckily, most 3D apps don't use 100% of a single GPU let alone multiple ones. Not only that, they don't come close to saturating a 16x lane so running 2 vid cards at 8x is not that much loss in performance compared to 16x in MOST consumer applications and scenarios. This however is typical real world usage. However, the OP may have in mind something that would saturate the bandwidth, such as running at 25x16 resolution with 16x SSAA or something silly. In that case, no the SB chip will not out perform in that 3D scenario any of the previous I7 chips on the LGA1366 socket. It just doesn't have the bandwidth to support that much information and will lose in performance to any of the previous chips.


So there is a very valid reason to purchase a slightly older platform with no real upgrade path. Actually, who we kidding? Did Intel ever supply much of an upgrade path before? The best "upgradeable" socket they ever released to my knowledge was the LGA775 socket which did indeed support a decent step up from core solo's to core duos, to core 2 duos, to core 2 quads. That was the most upgrade-ability that Intel has ever provided for a socket.