I upgrading my I7 930 to an I7 980 worth it ?
The answer is YES, the I7 980 at the time of writing cost me $135 used on ebay.
there are 2 extra cores in the CPU, so it is like having an extra dual core computer to share the RAM and any other resources, even without wasting more electrical power.
It is also the newer Gulftown architecture (32nm Lithography), compared to the older Bloomfield (45nm Lithography)
So how much computing power did i gain for this database server
i7 930: 3GHz * 8 = 24 total at turbo speed
i7 980: 3.6GHz * 12 = 43.2 total at turbo speed
That is 180% of the original
almost double the computing power for 100 dollars !
To make this more interesting, many are reporting the with the new bios update, the GA-X58A-UD3R will allow for 48GB of ram, not 24, I will be trying that soon.