I'm also interest in how more modern systems compare to a couple of generations back. CPU clock speeds or numbers of cores haven't changed that much, but trying to understand how increases in ram speed/bandwidth, larger on chip caches and new architectures effect performance on real world tasks is difficult to find, most reviews (as above) only seem to compare current models or just back one generation, if that.
Thus, I am looking for valid benchmark(s) so I can compare my system with published results for current hardware. Thanks for any suggestions.
I think the only way to do this is first find a site with some current benchmarks you'd trust, then try to get hold of the same software as they use.
Unfortunately this may prove quite difficult.
The second issue is what use will benchmark results be ? You'll see different performance with different software, so what might work well and give benefits for Photoshop might not give as great benefits with, say, Lightroom.
Comparing to three years back, I think the arrival of affordable SSDs can make a big difference to performance, plus the latest boards can take lots of, currently cheap, ram. I'm highly tempted to upgrade to a 3820 with 32gb ram and another SSD. It's difficult to know if the forthcoming ivy-bridge offering will be significantly faster at an affordable price in the near future.