Which Intel bridge for an upgrade ?

Just looking for a motherboard/CPU upgrade and I'm finding the differences between the current and pending Intel chips sets rather obscure.
From what I can see the actual performance differences for real world photo tasks is pretty minimal at similar price points. I'm not in the market for cutting edge 6 core cpus, or built in graphics capability and don't want to radically over clock.

Sandy bridge Z68 has cheap motherboards, but 32gb of dual channel ram is more expensive than quad channel which fits in the Sandy bridge E X79 boards. Looking forward, the newly announced Ivy bridge Z79 boards seem no faster, but still use more expensive dual channel DDR3. I somehow doubt the new IB CPUs are going to arrive at bargain basement prices, so that might rule out that route.
From what I can see I'll get the best punch per pound from a Z79 based system(3820 cpu with the option for a slight o/c). Anyone care to point out if that reasoning is flawed ?

I've already got a fast graphics card and SSD drives, so this decision comes down to chip set really.