Both machines have a RAID 1 of the same model of SSD (2x Corsair force 3 GTs) and no PCIE involved. Each gets about 1.1 gb/s when I benchmark it in Bonnie++.

Both machines have a RAID 1 of the same model of SSD (2x Corsair force 3 GTs) and no PCIE involved. Each gets about 1.1 gb/s when I benchmark it in Bonnie++. That and all 8 cores (I am counting the HT threads as cores) in the system monitor are fully saturated on both machines until the the linking stage of the build. I have a great deal of confidence the newer CPUs are significantly for at least building C++ code when disk bandwidth is not an issue.