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I was thinking the same thing. Guess the other boards use a Plex chip rather than what is provided by the CPU to achieve 16x. Perhaps x79 is still a better way to go?
I swear, this question pops up in various forms at least once a month. It used to be about P55, then P67/Z68, then Z77, now Z87.
It is overrated for dual SLI/crossfire, as there are no single GPU cards than can saturate 8x PCI-E 3.0, let alone 16x.
I understand what your saying but my thoughts were running 3 27" or 30" monitors with 3d surround, which might require 2 dual core cards on a Z87 board. I realize x79 might be better and would not require dual GPU cards, but the new CPUs have not arrived yet and I wonder if they are really worth the price since (I think) you lose a lot of new features with them?
I believe to run 3 monitors of that size at 60fps you're going to need two or three titans. If you're going to spend $1500+ on monitors and $2-3k on video cards then don't wonder if if x79 is too expensive. You'd be nuts to cheap out on the cpu and motherboard. With that said, you still won't saturate PCIe 3 8x.
Not too expensive, but possibly too expensive for the feature set? I'm not exactly sure how the latest x79s are stacking up with the z87 boards overall. Waiting for AMD to release their titan killer next month, before purchasing cards.
I understand what your saying but my thoughts were running 3 27" or 30" monitors with 3d surround, which might require 2 dual core cards on a Z87 board. I realize x79 might be better and would not require dual GPU cards, but the new CPUs have not arrived yet and I wonder if they are really worth the price since (I think) you lose a lot of new features with them?
What he is saying is there isn't a card and won't be any time soon that will communicate over the PCIe bus fast enough to saturate x8 lane PCIe 3.0 connector. Hell I am not sure we are really at the point where there would be a performance drop if you could only plug it into an 8x PCIe 1.0 port.
Either way, Haswell processors communicate with all GPUs using 16 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. That's it. That's what the processor is built with. No getting around this fact at all.
The only feature you "lose" on x79 IB-E vs unlocked Z87 Haswell is 6 native SATA3, where x79 has 2 native SATA3. However, choose the Gigabyte X79S-UP5 and you get the 8 native SAS ports, due to it using the fully unlocked C606 server chipset. Haswell's potentially important new feature, TSX (I believe that's what it's called), is disabled on unlocked processors, as well as VT-D and potentially some others as well.
[H] testing has shown that bottlenecks can occur with 4x PCI-E 2.0 and GTX 480s, so I'm pretty sure that Titans will be limited by 8x PCI-E 1.0.
[H]OCP x16/x16 vs x4/x4 testing.
Also relevant: [H]OCP x16/x16 vs x8/x8 testing.
No significant bottlenecks in single display 2560x1600, but did incur performance penalties at 5760x1200. It is also dependent on the game. The pattern seems to be that as resolution goes up, so does the importance of PCI-E bandwidth.
I was pointing out that PCI-E 1.0 8x would be a bottleneck at higher resolutions, and justintoxicated did say he was planning on running 3 monitors in 3D surround.
True. Not to mention most low-end X79 boards are about $250, and have almost the same features as similarly priced Z87 boards.
IMO if you're going more than $250 on a motherboard, you might as well go X79. Z87 is for sub-$200 boards.
You can get a Gigabyte X79-UD3 for way less than $250 (IIRC around $150 right now) and a 3820 or a 4820k when they come out for less than a comparably priced Haswell or Ivy unlocked quad core. If you're gaming and planning on multiple GPU's I think that is the sweet spot. Most people look down on the quad-core 2011 chips which I really don't understand when the boards are becoming much cheaper, it is a viable option.
I don't know specially if games are starting to shift over to a higher thread count and the small cost (compared to the platform as a whole with those 3 monitors) getting a 6c/12t part like the 4930 would seem like a better option as whole.
So I still haven't decided what to get just yet, but despite everyones advice I'm thinking to just get Haswell and deal with only 2 way SLI something like the Asus Formula or Hero. Waiting for C2 chipsets is taking forever though, if I wait just a little longer maybe I it will make more sense to go x79 again with the CPU refresh?
Depends on the features you prioritize, between the z87 and x79 chipset.
From reading Kyle's 4960x review, the newer asus x79 deluxe is due under a couple of weeks. So I would assume other new boards will be released around that time frame.
So I still haven't decided what to get just yet, but despite everyones advice I'm thinking to just get Haswell and deal with only 2 way SLI something like the Asus Formula or Hero. Waiting for C2 chipsets is taking forever though, if I wait just a little longer maybe I it will make more sense to go x79 again with the CPU refresh?
I know there is always something better coming out, but I have waited so long now that maybe waiting a little more would be worth it? Looks like more x79 motherboads will start coming out soon.