Ivy Bridge coming Monday... - 100% improvement in performance in terms of onboard graphics - 4-13% improvement in CPU - 20% improvement in power consumption - few other tidbits like builtin USB 3.0 support http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57418588-64/intels-ivy-bridge-waits-on-windows-8/ This is really going to be a modest upgrade to the Sandy Bridge processor. The onboard graphics is impressive, but its not as good as a dedicated GPU which most laptops come with nowadays. In terms of battery life, this will be a great upgrade. However, if you just sit at home or plugged in at Starbucks all the time then you wont notice the difference.
The Xeon E3's have already been a huge game-changer in the server world. Low power with onboard GPU means that IPKVM's are obsolete. You can run a really robust ~10W firewall with built-in KVM. As soon as VMware sorts out direct device pass-through or multi-device pass-through for these CPU/GPU combos it will be the new standard.
Performance in onboard graphics has negligible impact on trading. Drawing 2D candles and squiggly lines (indicators) is not GPU challenging. Speed of the processor is important. A low teen percentage improvement is not impressive. When it comes to processors, they usually double every 2 years (Moore's Law).
I used that loosely. Number of transistors doubled in every 2 years. Speed, memory capacity... doubled every 18 months or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law Just that my point it I would be looking for a "double" improvement in next then next then next then next generation. Not a single digit.