Will this bottleneck my build?

[Pharixces]

Hey Guys,

 

I was wondering if someone can give me some insight on this matter as im not entirely sure how to interpret it anymore.

 

Let me first specify my idea's around a build i am doing (and the implications around deciding which platform to use).

 

My idea was to build a new rig purely for gaming and some office work (no rendering and no workstation stuff). At first i was tempted in going with an X99 setup with a nice hexacore running on DDR4, but reading around on the web and checking up some vids on youtube made it kind of clear that the DDR4/X99/octacore wouldn't perse benefit me in gaming. Rather than that most people suggested going for a Z97 setup and a 4790k since the clock speeds per core are higher and games benefit from a few faster cores rather then alot of "slower" cores (since games aren't that multi threaded dependent........yet).

 

So all in all i went with a z97 setup happily thinking that was the right thing to do. Now the part comes in where i got confused in my choice. The idea of this rig was to have some 4k ability for gaming and i wanted it fitted with 2 980's in SLI. That is all good and well but then i added a sound blaster card in the setup since i kinda wanted a dedicated sound card....

 

Now i am worried that i am overusing my PCI lanes and will bottleneck my system somewhere. Also my board of choice doesn't come with a PLX chip and i can't really find out if fitting the sound card in the last PCI-E 16x slot will decrease performance on the first 2 PCI-E 16 slots or that they'll keep running in x8/x8 just fine.

 

And on that note i couldn't really find a clear answer as to which a sli 980 setup would benefit over the extra lanes of an x99 setup whereas the first 2 slots will run in x16/x16 mode.

 

 

 

in short guys, can any of you help me on this matter?

 

Many thanks in advance! 

[H4X3R]

Z97 with x8/x8 will not bottleneck 2 x 980s. The 4790K will also not bottleneck them. Dedicated sound cards are useless, if you want something to power your AWESOME headphones (assuming they are HD600 and up) then an external amp/dac combo would be good. However, my AKG K612 Pros can easily be powered by my onboard audio (which is the same as on Z97 motherboards).

[Toddwjp]

it will be fine if all the slots are gen 3 pcie 

[ZetZet]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/21.html

[Pharixces]

Thanks guys for the quick replies. 

 

@H4X3R: 

So your suggesting to drop the card? But in case if i kept it, would putting the card in the last x16 slot change the running mode to x8/x8/x4 or rather to x8/x4/x4? (would also raise the question if the pci lanes from the chipset would help lighten the load)

 

@Toddwjp:

I'm going for a Asus maximus VII formula board (looks mainly the choice) and supposidly it And this is what it says on their site:

• Uitbreidingsslots
  3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8 or x8/x4/x4) *1
  1 x mini-PCIe 2.0 x1 *2
  3 x PCIe 2.0 x1

 

edit: reason why i'm asking so much in details is also to learn from the logic behind the distribution.

 

And @ZetZet: thanks for the article, that helps seeing in perspective the, relative, minor "losses".

[H4X3R]

 

Thanks guys for the quick replies. 

 

@H4X3R: 

So your suggesting to drop the card? But in case if i kept it, would putting the card in the last x16 slot change the running mode to x8/x8/x4 or rather to x8/x4/x4? (would also raise the question if the pci lanes from the chipset would help lighten the load)

 

@Toddwjp:

I'm going for a Asus maximus VII formula board (looks mainly the choice) and supposidly it And this is what it says on their site:

 

1) No it will not change the running mode to x8/x4/x4.

2) Motherboards in the same price range like the MSI Z97 XPower AC, Gigabyte Z97X Gaming GT, Asrock Z97 Extreme9 and Asus Z97 WS all support x16/x16, x8/x8/x8 and x8/x8/x8/x8. I suggest you get one of those motherboards instead.

[Pharixces]

Thanks H4X3R, will look into those other boards.