The CPU Isn't The Problem!
What do you mean, "in the LGA775 days"?
I'm still rocking a Q9550.
And when it becomes obsolete, I'll just declare myself a hipster and keep on using it. 775 FTW.
The issue with LGA775 (or anything newer) isn't the CPU itself, but the improvements since in the rest of the periphery.
Do you *really* need anything newer than LGA775 to run even Windows 8? Surprisingly, the answer is an absolute *no*, as there is a grand total of *one* feature in Windows 8 (Hyper-V) that absolutely positively is not supported in LGA775. (The rather amusing part is that merely by changing to a *server* version of Windows (specifically, Windows Server 2008 or later, including Server 2008R2 or 2012), you CAN run Hyper-V on LGA775 - my Q6600 dual-boots Windows 8 Pro x64 and Server 2012; while Windows 8 can't run Hyper-V clients, Server 2012 does.) You can add (or even boot from) an SSD with LGA775-based hardware, even hardware with chipsets such as the stumblebum that is the corporate-stable/consumer-stable G41. That said, LGA775/G41 has two rather nasty issues -
1. RAM capacity - G41 supports just two DIMM slots; they can be either DDR2 or DDR3, but the maximum is just two. Adding insult to injury, G41's DDR3 DIMM capacity remains firewalled at 4GB per DIMM - it can't swallow the 8GB DIMMs that are now available at decent prices.
2. Bottlenecking elsewhere - All too often, resolving gaming bottlenecks on an LGA775-based system requires leaving LGA775, even, if not especially, if the bottleneck is outside the CPU, and it almost always is.