Yes, as reflected in my comments, this capability still exists in SQL Server 2012. There is just an issue in Books Online currently that makes it appear that there isn't a 2012 version of this topic, if the current version of the topic you're in is not the 2012 version.
Typically the features that you don't hear about from marketing are the ones that don't bring in all the money (e.g. pushed as "enterprise feaures" in order to sell Enterprise Edition). I answered a similar question here that provided a list of my favorite new features in 2012, that also aren't limited to Enterprise Edition:
What are Objective Business Reasons to Prefer SQL Server 2012 over 2008 R2?
(I could list them here but I don't think duplication makes sense. And there are some other good answers on that page as well.)
The only difference would be you could add to the list the things that have been added from 2008 on: date/time data types, data compression (Enterprise), backup compression (Standard+), some syntax improvements (multi-row values, inline declare + assign, +=/-=, etc). These are things you would get, though, whether you went 2005 -> 2008 R2 or 2005 -> 2012. Guess I knee-jerked listing those because you won't get them if you stay where you are.
In addition, moving to 2012 now instead of 2008 R2 buys you a longer lease toward end-of-life / end-of-mainstream support. However if you are using CAL licensing you might consider 2008 R2, because this option isn't available anymore in 2012 Enterprise. And core licensing can be more expensive if your CPUs have more than 4 cores per socket. They recently updated the "How to Buy" part of the site; you should stay on top of that and keep in good touch with a licensing rep. They're not perfect (and we can have a different discussion about this) but they're the only ones who can give you plausible deniability should anything they sell you end up putting you out of compliance, as long as you haven't lied to them. :-)
If you're going to take advantage of CPU-intensive things like compression, then having faster, fewer cores may be tolerable overall especially since it will make your SQL licensing (quite likely the most expensive part of your solution) that much cheaper. More, slower cores will be more expensive in terms of licensing, and spreading the work over more cores won't necessarily do any better for an OLTP-type workload - since many tasks cannot be parallel anyway. Also, AMD cores are subject to a core factor, which means the pricing is adjusted. This means you pay less per AMD core than per Intel core, but this is probably reflected in the performance, as well (at least if my conversations with Glenn Berry are any indication). No discount like this is in effect for 2008 R2 (at least AFAIK) since you're paying by the socket. Personally, I would rather spend the money on the better cores, but at 48x + 1.33x for licensing I'm not sure I could sell the bean-counters on it. :-)
But there's no way anyone here can tell you which way to go. If you can get some spec hardware in both configurations that would be ideal - you really should test your full workload cycle to see if fewer, faster processors are better for your workload - or at least close enough that they are justified by the licensing savings. On modern hardware I'd expect that to be a better option but I am not going to sign anything that guarantees it. :-)
Best Answer
Everybody's excited about AlwaysOn and ColumnStore, but many of the benefits of SQL Server 2012 are not exclusive to high-end editions. I don't want to sound like a spokesperson, but I've given plenty of presentations on SQL Server 2012 and I think it has a lot to offer at whatever edition suits you.
Partially Contained Databases which allow you to move databases between servers or environments with a few less shackles (namely server-level logins and server collation dependencies - future versions will handle thornier items like linked servers and Agent jobs).
Management Studio is now a much better tool, aligned with Visual Studio. IntelliSense is better and a whole bunch of other features make editing easier. Now of course you can have 2008 R2 on your server and use the 2012 version of SSMS, but I'm not sure how that works licensing-wise, and some shops don't want mixed versions (I prefer having the most recent tools on my workstation even to manage downlevel servers). I blogged about the changes early on, when there were still bugs, so please ignore the negatives since most or all are fixed as of RTM. I shudder now when I have to use an earlier version of SSMS.
Metadata enhancements allow you to inspect resultsets of objects and ad hoc queries, and also allow you to better shape the output of queries.
Custom Server Roles allow you to define a much more granular set of permissions for users at a role level instead of granting/revoking one by one, or just giving in to complexity and giving them sysadmin.
FileTable lets you manage a folder like a table of documents, but still have external control over the contents (so imagine being able to do this with T-SQL, and imagine how hard it would be to do in cmd or PowerShell:
UPDATE C:\Docs\*.* SET ReadOnly = 1 WHERE Author = 'Bob' AND Created < '20100101';)... think FileStream meets WinFS and gets some usability to boot.T-SQL Enhancements allow you to do many things that were a pain in previous versions:
THROW(think of it as re-raise)OFFSET/FETCH(simpler, ANSI-standard paging - also see this post)SEQUENCE(centralized IDENTITY mechanism, like in Oracle)IIF()/CHOOSE()/CONCAT()/EOMONTH()DATEFROMPARTS) similar toDateSerialin VBPARSE()/FORMAT()- like their .NET counterparts (but see this post about the latter)TRY_CONVERT()/TRY_PARSE()- returnNULLifCONVERT/PARSEfailExtended Events has an enhanced UI for configuration / viewing, and finally completely covers trace / audit functionality (including much better causality tracking).
Lots of new DMVs, system procedures and ShowPlan enhancements for diagnostics and performance troubleshooting. Also take a look at what CSS is calling "The Black Box Recorder."
Server Core allows you to run on a bare-minimum server without all the UI components (smaller surface area means it is more secure, and reduced maintenance since less parts of OS are subject to Windows Update).
Full-Text Search gets some important underlying performance enhancements, as well as semantic search (think keywords) and customizable proximity / NEAR.
AWE is no longer supported, meaning your SQL Server instance on x86 with 32GB of RAM is only going to be able to use 4GB - so you will finally have motivation to get off your old 32-bit hardware.