I just read the first wave of I7 reviews. There are good news and bad news.
It seems that if you're just using a single GPU, then you won't benefit that by upgrading from an older quad-core to the I7.
However, the I7 is quite a bit faster with multi-GPU configurations. That's probably due to Intel making better mobos than Nvidia (old quad-cores are still stuck with shitty Nvidia mobos for SLI).
If you do lots of multimedia stuff like video encoding and photo editing, then you should upgrade to an I7. The I7 kills the older processors in almost all non-gaming apps.