Trying to choose a mobo, quick question..

jonnymo

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Aug 17, 2011
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hey guys, I'm having a bit of trouble choosing a mobo for my i52500k and 2 Gigabyte GTX570's (SLI)

At the moment I'm tossing up these two:

1. Gigabyte Z68XP UD4
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3910#ov

2. ASROCK Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=Z68%20Extreme4%20Gen3

I'm not two bothered by integrated graphics (i.e. Lucid Virtu) since I already have GPU's.

There's honestly not much difference between them in terms of price/features but there is one issue that keeps popping up when I'm looking at mobos: the PICE slots

The ASROck states it has "2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots"

wheras the Gigabyte mobo only has one x16 slot which would mean that it would be slower with my SLI right?
 
Tech answer:

1) Read the new article at Tomshardware on micro-stuttering.

2) New AMD cards in Q4 2011

3) New NVidia cards in Q2 2012

A single GTX570 maxes out pretty much every game. By the time you need more than that you can upgrade.

The new cards from AMD and NVidia will use a 28nm die process which should use roughly 2.5x less power. This means the cards will be MUCH QUIETER. They will also be able to make better performing cards than they have now (heat is the limiting factor).

Currently they have to use multiple GPU's (on one card or having multiple cards) however stuttering becomes an issue.

Summary:
I'd wait for either the new AMD or NVidia cards, and forget about multiple GPU's.
 

Only the 1155 boards with the "NF200" Bridge run dual cards @ x16. Examples would be Gigabyte UD7, Asrock Extreme7 Gen3, Asus Maximus



Asrock and Asus parted ways over a year ago.