A leaked slide from an Intel presentation suggests that longevity will be good if you purchase an Intel X79 motherboard today.
Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge-E* CPUs are based on their advanced 22nm process node. The leaked slide suggests that these CPUs will be supporting the existing LGA-2011 platform.
As Ivy Bridge-E based CPUs are rumored for a Q4 2012 release, this means that a mere BIOS update could be all that’s needed to upgrade your rig in late 2012 to the latest and greatest technology.
Intel X79-based motherboards with the LGA-2011 socket from Intel was just released worldwide to the consumer market this week, and features built-in support for two 6Gbps SATA ports, four 3Gbps SATA ports and 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes.
Next generation graphics cards utilizing the new PCI Express 3.0-bandwidth are expected (rumored) to be released from early January 2012.
* The “E” stands for Enthusiast, which are the most powerful consumer CPU series from Intel. These are not to be confused with their non-E counterparts, which cater more to people with a smaller budget or lower power demands.