I am making a website at the moment, it would be easiest for me to cut up the navigation and add links to the images...this would also look better.
But is it better for SEO if I have normal text links with maybe a rollover using CSS?

Well, text links are better (can't you style backgrounds, borders etc. with CSS?)

But I would accept using images if it was important for layout.

(If you use CSS rollover over text, then I guess drawbacks from SEO perspective are very limited except if Google may think you are trying to hide text links. Not likely they can draw any conclusions of that sort)

According to me, Text link will be the best.Because it will help to obtain good ranking in search engine.

I also feel that text link would be better that image link.Because it helped us for link juice.

The text in the link tells the search engine what that page is about, and it is so powerful that pages can rank well for terms found only in links to the page and not on the page itself. Image links are followed and counted as well, and the text in the alt attribute for the image serves the same function as anchor text. General theory holds that alt text isn't as "powerful" as link text, and for good reason. While it's difficult to prove that alt text on image links is "less important" than text links, it does seem to make sense that text links have a little more "weight" than image links.

Sometimes the most important and relevant part of the page is just too extended to be used in prime navigation. Here comes the images link. In this situation image links are more useful in comparison to text links. There is a chance of stealing your images on the website in the method of image optimization but still it will bring a lot of people in which there may be potential customers.

Text link is so beneficial than image link. It helps to increase your keywords rank.

If you are only linking within your website then having text links wont help you gain anything for SEO. Only outside links are counted in SEO. Use image links instead. This will help your website look better and your visitors navigate fast and easy.

i think text link are really the best then image link. These types of text link are helps to improve keyword ranking on different search engine results

As per my experience, You should sure approach for text links. Because it may help us to increase keyword ranking for these text. While in case of Image links, It may not help us to get ranking in search engine.

The text in the link tells the search engine what that page is about, and it is so powerful that pages can rank well for terms found only in links to the page and not on the page itself. Image links are followed and counted as well, and the text in the alt attribute for the image serves the same function as anchor text. General theory holds that alt text isn't as "powerful" as link text, and for good reason.

You could use image link for attractive navigation but you must also use text link navigation so that search engines could read the text and know about what the page linked is about.
So use both text link for seo purpose and image link to make your site attractive.

Yes text links always work good if we talk about SEO.