IE 64bit is poorly supported, I'm not even sure why Microsoft even bothered with it. Run IE 32bit, Chrome, or Firefox. Cache the whole browser to ram for even faster speed when there's no SSD

Nothing much really. The real benefit is able to use quick sync on the Z68. Lucid Virtu degrades FPS a little and power savings is marginal even with it enabled. P67 and PCIE2.0 is perfectly fine if you are building a rig now. Unfortunately, most P67 Asus boards are already EOL, so customers are forced to buy the Z68 chipset at a premium. Only a few brands still have left-over P67 boards.

We need 1155 IB

Apparently 33% faster on the IGP but AMD's APU should still be better.

True, AMD's APU may be good but they still don't scale well with games.

Looks a wee bit better, but improvement on the igp. The improvement is totally moot on my p67 board

2500k is one of the top sellers (if not their top K series seller), they will not discontinue it unless there was a 2550k. Even so, they may not discontinue 2500k unless there's a cost benefit to push a different cpu.

If you can still get 2500k, get it. They are officially eol now. Your last chance to try your luck getting a CPU that can run 5ghz 24/7

Yes. There seem to be an outbreak for cheap Xeon CPUs suddenly

Water cooling only. You may need 1.5v to hit 5ghz