Is it worth it to upgrade my motherboard?

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IkkixD

IkkixD

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Dec 11, 2014
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I currently have an Asus Z97-A Motherboard. I have 2 970's and I plan on purchasing an Intel 750 SSD soon. It's a Pcie SSD... I'm not sure how it will perform if put on the last remaining PCI-e 2.0 x16 slot.. Should I upgrade my motherboard to one that has 3 pci-e 3.0 slots? or should I replace my 2 970's with a 980ti? Also if anyone knows, would the Intel 750 even work in a pci-e 2.0 x16? and if so what would the speed be capped at?
 
Solution
MarkW
No. The reason why is that your 2 GTX 970's require 8 lanes of PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 each to function in SLI mode. And your CPU only has 16 of those lanes. So even if you upgraded to another Z97 motherboard with 3 PCIe 16x slots, you still need all 16 available lanes for the 2 video cards.

The only way get past that is to buy a X99 CPU and motherboard, and DDR4 memory, or buy a new Skylake CPU and Z170 motherboard, and DDR4 memory.

In other words, you probably just want to put the Intel 750 SSD into the 2.0 slot for now.
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MarkW

MarkW

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Dec 7, 2009
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No. The reason why is that your 2 GTX 970's require 8 lanes of PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 each to function in SLI mode. And your CPU only has 16 of those lanes. So even if you upgraded to another Z97 motherboard with 3 PCIe 16x slots, you still need all 16 available lanes for the 2 video cards.

The only way get past that is to buy a X99 CPU and motherboard, and DDR4 memory, or buy a new Skylake CPU and Z170 motherboard, and DDR4 memory.

In other words, you probably just want to put the Intel 750 SSD into the 2.0 slot for now.
 
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Solution
geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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Good explanation from MarkW.

What do you hope to accomplish with a 750?

Do not buy the intel 750, at least not now.
You may need motherboard bios updates to boot on a Z97 motherboard; check that out.
The big advantage of a pcie ssd is sequential transfer capability; that will be negated on X2.
I suspect that pcie based ssd technology will get a big change within the year.

On graphics, your budget does not seem to be an issue.
GTX980ti will lose synthetic benchmarks to sli GTX970, but your gaming experience will likely be better.

You will be equally better off with a good SSD and have some change left in your pocket.

 
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IkkixD

IkkixD

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Dec 11, 2014
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Damn, that's what I was afraid of. Thanks for the head's up.
I'll probably just wait like geofelt says, No point in wasting the money I suppose. Thanks both of you :)

 
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