No USB 3, but a silly number of SATA 6Gbps ports... I'll have to read that other article on this so called "trouble", but even regardless of that I don't see a point in upgrading. It doesn't look like it offers any real reason to over SB.
In fact, I am starting to seriously wonder if X79 boards will even get UEFI or not, because without that most users would be better off with Z68 and SB, not counting the cost difference too.
I'd bank on Intel waiting until the launch of Ivy Bridge before we see 8 core chips but, as Jamie mentioned, there's the 3990X. Based on the 3960X, what does Intel have left to increase unless they go decide to launch a chip with a higher nominal and Turbo Boost increased speed.
I like the quad-channel memory and (supposed) full QPI interconnect between the CPU and chipset, but the rest of the platform seems to be pretty mediocre at best, and pretty bad at worst if it doesn't get UEFI and USB 3.0 support from major system builders. SB-E is supposed to be about the platform, but since I don't use multi-GPU setups the additional PCIe bandwidth to the CPU doesn't mean anything to me, or most potential buyers.
