i5-4690k bottleneck 3-way gtx 970 sli?

FUBAR44 · Sep 22, 2014

I currently have an i5-4690k and was wondering if it would bottleneck 3 gtx 970's in 3-way sli at 5760x1080 resolution?

Can't find any info anywhere online about it. Every high end 3 way sli review are all running 3930k/4930k/5930k/5960x processors.

Thanks

DubbleClick · Sep 23, 2014

You can't find reviews because you 'can't' run 3 way sli on a z97 platform. Well, you can, but in the best case at 8x, 4x, 4x pci lanes. The 5930k, etc. ofer 40 opposed to 16 pci lanes, supporting 3 way sli and crossfire better.

For the I5 bottlenecking, probably yes, probably no. Changes on the way you look at it. Would you get more fps with a better cpu? Definitely yes.
Would the fps difference be high? Mostlikely not, around 3-5 fps I would expect.

Damn_Rookie · Sep 23, 2014

DubbleClick :

Just to note, you can run 3 way SLI on a Z97 board, but the board needs to have a PLX chip to effectively 'increase' the number of PCI-E lanes available, and motherboards with those do not come cheap (the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-Gaming GT is the cheapest I've seen recently at $224).

Also, nVidia doesn't officially support SLI on x16 slots running in x4 mode; they require a minimum of x8 for each card, which is why the only Z97 boards that support 3 or 4 way SLI have a PLX chip.

With regards to the bottleneck, well, it would depend on the game (as is often the case). Running at that high of a resolution helps push things more towards the graphics side of the equation, which will help limit the likelihood of a CPU bottleneck, but on the flip side there's the increased overhead from 3-way SLI, so there will likely still be times where the CPU will hold you back in CPU heavy games.

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i5-4690k bottleneck 3-way gtx 970 sli?

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