I have an i7 970 system built around an Asus P6T SE (socket 1366) motherboard.

Now the onboard lan packed-up some time ago so I had to buy a lan card. The board does not have USB3 so also had to get a usb3 card. As for Sata 6Gbps - forget it!

Now one of the sata connections is playing up

So what do I do?

1) Ditch the board and get another socket 1366 - something like the Asus Sabretooth - although obviously a now eol socket that board has USB3 and Sata 6 built in.
2) Do nothing.
3) Wait until Ivy Bridge comes out in March (socket 1155) and then rebuild entire rig around that - although will only be 4core cpu - but hoping the i7 970 cpu gets a good price.

I had thought about rebuilding rig based around socket 2011 but having seen the results of the new cpu's compared to my existing one it is not worth the cost.

If you've got the money I'd be tempted to go for 3. Unless you're doing something that hammers all 6 (or 12 virtual) cores then the lower core count on Ivy Bridge isn't likely to be much of an issue. If you do hammer all 6 cores a lot of the time then 1 is a better bet because an i7 970 should still have plenty of life in it anyway.

Given it appears that your existing mobo is failing a little bit at a time I'd steer clear of 2.

Yes I think 3) is probably the best option - reckon my 970 is worth about £250 at moment.

Anyone know when Ivy is due out - I'm sure I read April time?

One SATA port has failed? Do you need it? Can you get by with the remaining ports?
If so, I'd do nothing.

Well the sata port has not fully failed - it is sometimes there when I boot-up and sometimes not - problem is that is the port the o/s hard drive uses.

Have swapped it to another port but all the sata ports on the mobo are being used so just means another hard drive sometimes disappears!