Z97 PLX worth it?

[Cyier]

I am thinking about upgrading from my z87 ITX board to an z97 ATX gaming build, in prep for gaming on 27-30" monitors in the next 6 months.  One of the things I am having difficulty with deciding on is to spend the extra on a z97 motherboard with PLX for the x16 x16 SLI/Crossfire configuration or the normal x8 x8.  I have read on various forums that its not worth it at the time but if you plan to upgrade to 4k monitors it may.  I plan on using this for Star Citizen, various FPS and MMO's.  If you were going keep this gaming build for 4-5 and plan on gaming at 4k within 2 years would you go for a PLX motherboard or not?  Either way which motherboard's would you recommend for the best features for a top end of $400.  My CPU is a i7-4771 so overclocking isn't really an option.  

 

Thank you for your time and help with this question.  

[79wjd]

If you decide to get a new board (changing form factors) then get a 4690k/4790k and a z97 board. But seeing as you already have a Haswell i7, you should just get the cheapest SLI supporting board. Oh, and theres no reason to spend that much on a board....An Asus Maximus Hero VII is more than enough for any two-way config....hell, even an MSI Z97 G55 SLI ($120) is just as good, just with lesser onboard audio.

Current gpus won't saturate x8 anyway.

[Freaky_spider]

not worth it

 

benches http://be.hardware.info/reviews/5247/4/test-hoeveel-pci-express-lanes-is-optimaal-voor-sli-resultaten

[Lotus]

Why would you upgrade? What are you trying to do? Motherboards have no performance numbers or attributes, simply things that they are compatible with and power delivery to all the connected parts. Basically, if your z87 mobo supports PCIE 3.0 and can do sli/crossfire at x8 and x8 speeds, and that speed does not bottleneck your GPU, then there is no advantage to going up to a Z97 for more PCIe bandwidth. Let me also say that PCIE 3.0 x8 is the same as PCIe 2.0 x16, and there are tons of AMD setups running SLI/Crossfire at PCIE 2.0 x16 (again, the same speed as PCIE 3.0x8) without hitting bottlenecks.

 

Basically, I don't think you're going to get any performance gain at all.\

 

edit: didn't see you had an ITX board. Yeah, SLI on that sucker is impossible.