Looking for PCIe dual x16 motherboard
- Thread starter Akr706
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Pikker
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- Jun 12, 2014
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Any reason as to why you would want to run 970s in SLI instead of say getting a single 980 Ti? Both options are around the same price.
Generally, you want to get the fastest single GPU before considering putting in a second one in, as you have to deal with a few extra problems. First of all is micro stutter which gets worse as you add more cards, second of all is that not all games support SLI, and lastly is that many applications that benefit from GPU acceleration do not scale with SLI. A single 980 Ti is powerful enough to drive modern games at 1440p 60fps with all the settings maxed out as it is.
The actual performance impact of 8x vs 16x itself is debatable, in most games it probably won't matter, but if you're doing heavy GPGPU calculations with a lot of cards then it may matter.
Generally, you want to get the fastest single GPU before considering putting in a second one in, as you have to deal with a few extra problems. First of all is micro stutter which gets worse as you add more cards, second of all is that not all games support SLI, and lastly is that many applications that benefit from GPU acceleration do not scale with SLI. A single 980 Ti is powerful enough to drive modern games at 1440p 60fps with all the settings maxed out as it is.
The actual performance impact of 8x vs 16x itself is debatable, in most games it probably won't matter, but if you're doing heavy GPGPU calculations with a lot of cards then it may matter.
Yes, I truly understand that a single 980 Ti is much better. But the problem is that, here, GTX 970 costs $400 and 980 Ti (reference) costs around $1010, the availability of non-reference cards is rare. Also for now, being tight on budget, I will be playing games on my old dell 21 inches full hd display. But I will upgrade it to 2K display in near future, so I am thinking to keep it SLI ready.
If you are talking about Hashwell-E, then i gues some of them do support. But if you are talking about latest 6th gen cpus with Z170, then no, they don't support dual x16.
You can also see "Up to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8+2x4" in the following link.
http://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz
2x x16 is not any better than 2x x8 in real world usage which is why the majority of boards top out at x8 x8 x4
The gigabyte board uses a PLX chip to increase the PCIe lane count so they can have the 2x x16, but keep in mind this changes based on what other slots and board functions you are using and you are paying a huge premium for that added chipset.
You will not see any difference between 2 x16 slots and 2 x8 slots for 2way SLI. The real point of all the extra bandwidth on that board is so you can run 4way SLI which you can not do on most Z170 boards. I think most people would say if you plan to go 4way ALI to go x99 because the PLX chip from what I have read will cause some latency. I am not sure this has been identified down to a real world impact yet so who knows.
I am not going to argue with you because honestly I am still not 100% sure I understand how this really works, but here is a quote from the Tweaktown review of the G1. I am not trying to be a jerk here I just feel like the issue is a bit muddy.
"All the CPU's 16x PCI-E lanes are routed to a PLX bridge which outputs 32x PCI-E 3.0 ports downstream. Two sets of 16x lanes are routed to the first and third PCI-E slots, and each of those slots shares 8x lanes with the 16x slot below it. You can run 16x/0x/16x/0x, 16x/0x/8x/8x, 8x/8x/16x/0, or 8x/8x/8x/8x for 4-way SLI/CrossFireX. All the PCI-E 1x slots are PCI-E 2.0 and go through an ASMedia bridge chip."
So the claim here is all 8x for 4way SLI which should not be possible and since it ALL goes through the PLX there could be some latency. I would love to see a 4 way SLI comparison of this vs x99 board.
Lastly I think we are both in agreement that if you do want to go SLI above 8x/8x then x99 is a better choice for direct to CPU PCI lanes.
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