iRiley

HD4870 1GB Because I'm poor and want to play current titles but am lacking sufficient funds. Life problems keep getting in the way like mortgage payments, transport and food.

Thanks for your input. A good point that the human experience is often something that doesn't get benchmarked sound quality may get missed in a graphic benchmark and real world factors e.g wifi affect performance too. What about a drop to 4x which would be the case if I were on Z97 with dual GPU and PCIe SSD. Would that be noticeable? Would that performance be worse than Dual GPU at 8x and a Sata3 SSD?

x8 doesn't affect GPU performance.... at all???

My understanding was wrong then, it's not that there is contention, the system slows the other PCIe devices to accommodate the lane usage. I'm thinking that PCIe SSD wasn't meant for Z97. Even if I went with a single GPU, eg 980ti with SSD, that would then be running at 8x due to the SSD. Some LTT benchmarks on this would be interesting. To quantify the performance difference z97 single GPU with SSD single GPU with SSD raid 0 single GPU with PCIeSSD dual gpu with PCIeSSD x99 dual gpu with PCIeSSD We may then see what the true purpose of x99 is. I think disk drive r/w speed could be one of the reasons that there doesn't seem to be much of a performance difference when you compare the two platforms

I agree, Z97 was the side I came down on, but how is the performance affected when you bring PCIe 3.0 SSD into the mix? Does the 4Lanes used on the SSD have a serious performance drag on the PCIe bus and therfore would SATA be better in this Z97 scenario? Or is the PCIe interface so mega that even with 3 devices of 20lanes competing over 16Lanes of Z97 still the superior option?

I'm building a new system later this year, but thinking through my options at the moment and wanted some informed, constructive input. The system is going to be my "do everything" PC. Gaming, Music/Video production & CAD My original thinking was Z97 with a 4790k overclocked, 2x GTX980 in SLI with a 1 to 2TB STAT-III SSD (i have a NAS for my main storage), 32GB DDR3 PCI 2.0 audio interface. That's a decent system, right? The bottle neck is likely to be the SSD r/w speed. Maybe i could Raid 0, but then you have to consider redundancy as a potential drawback. But with the new PCIe SSD's coming over the horizon it is changing my thinking. If I'm spending that kind of money on a system that I want to do everything comfortably, should i consider PCIe storage? Which brings me to why i posted in this category. My understanding of the way PCIe 3.0 traffic is handled through the chipset to the CPU is that it is shared through the available lanes. So that's 16Lanes on Z97, 41Lanes on X99. With the Z97 that would mean there would be contention, but not on the x99. If I go down the route of X99 I'm then seriouly ramping up the cost of the system: MoBo, RAM, CPU etc I guess what I'm really asking is will I notice the contention of 2GPU & SSD on the 16 Lanes of the Z97? Does anyone have experience of both architectures? At what level of cpu demand is x99 needed/advised? Is high end multi GPU with PCIe SSD designed for X99 or is it suitable for Z97? Will I get a better performing system with the GPU's sharing the 16Lanes of a Z97 and having a SATA III drive(s) or does the benefit of PCIe SSD out weigh the contention, even on the Z97/LGA1150 platform?

Exactly what I needed. Thanks very much!!

Does anyone know the airflow rate of the H100i? The data provided by Corsair for each of the stock fans states 77cfm, however this figure is at zero static pressure and I'm not even certain it's accurate especially when you look at the tests Linus conducted here: Good design demands that the airflow should be balanced, depending upon the design to positive, negative or even. But without knowing the net airflow rate the remaining case fans could be under or over powered for the system. I've asked Corsair but their response was "Hello, We do not have the data you seek available for release. Sorry about that"