If you're principally using your rig for gaming then a 6600K\Z170 combo is better suited to your needs, it also frees up funds to lavish on a GPU - oh and forget the Dominators, they look pretty but they're not the best memory kits in terms of bang per buck.
Will the 6600K\Z170 have a reasonable longevity as was my current combo which I must admit has been bloody great? I appreciate you and others view on the RAM but I love my bling and love LED RAM.
That's what I "upgraded" to, last month, but only because I refused to throw any more money at the increasingly rare and expensive Z77 mATX/ITX motherboards - my 3770K is a great CPU, I'm currently debating whether to sell it or give my son's H77 rig an upgrade. I seriously doubt Intel will ever release another milestone CPU of the likes of Sandy Bridge. Having said that, the incremental nature of their releases should mean Skylake will last a few years before becoming noticeably long in the tooth. Oh and do you how I solved the bling problem? I bought a chassis without a side window and stuck it under the desk.
Cannot do that, I have just bought the Carbide 240 with a lovely window and with my LED Ram and 5 blue LED fans my white and blue colour scheme is really pleasant on my desk.
I am running 2xGTX 960 in SLI for 1080p. Definitely not 'dead' as you put it. Had practically doubled my frame rates in pretty much all the games I have played. Sniper Elite 3 Crysis 3 Dying Light the recent examples of excellent scaling.
I'll post back in a couple of weeks with Doom 3 figures. (Single and dual cards enabled) Those games are all demanding of a GPU. Also, The Division works pretty well on a GTX 960 SLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziNBeJm5dSE Maybe it's your system? Also, Far Cry 4 recent enough for you? 90% scaling on that one for 2XGTX 960. Plus a whole list of other games that scale EXTREMELY well in SLI mode. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/14.html
I think you're missing the point. VT was suggesting the current trend amongst games devs is not to spend resources on multi-GPU support.
Do you buy games on launch day? I think the last game I bought on launch day was Half Life 2. I usually wait a little while for A. The prices to tumble and B. The bugs to get sorted This would probably mitigate most of your argument in my case but each his own I guess.
Maybe he is just unlucky in his game choices that those games have poor/none at launch support for multi GPU. I have rarely had any issues with the games I have played.
I buy pretty much every game at launch yes. I don't like having to wait for them to work whilst my friends all enjoy themselves playing without me. As I said, 90% of the latest games released over the past few months simply just don't work with more than one GPU. And there's close to nothing that AMD or Nvidia can do, without begging game devs to revisit their code and add support in but all of the games that they have (like Fallout 4 or BLOPS III which flickers like an asshole on SLI and CFX) never work properly. I would blame AMD but I can't, because they've been fighting a losing battle. Unless DX12 games (proper ones, not patch in cash ins) support it when they start coming out then it's pretty much curtains for multi GPU. I don't want to sound so depressing trust me, I've been using both technologies for years, but this really is the end.
If your stat of 90% is correct (I am guessing you are referring to mainly AAA games?) then I wonder why motherboard manufacturers continue to sell and promote boards that support SLI (In 2/3/4 card setups) and why NVidia and AMD continue to extol multi GPU setups. (More dough from us unsuspecting snerts no doubt) You would think that if this stat is correct and this is a downward trend that is set to continue and the gaming community knew about it, it would mean there is virtually no market for SLI boards going forward.
Maybe a poll thread might be in order to see who uses what generation card and configuration ie SLi, Crossfire or single GPU. Those that vote could possibly add further details of GPU/s used and experiences in the games they play in terms of FPS - just a thought
In fairness Nvidia and AMD are not doing any marketing or campaigning for SLI or Crossfire. Even more so by not making any dual GPU cards pushed at users for gaming. I'll agree, when Titan Z launched SLI support was really good but since then things have changed dramatically. Most games used to be coded to work on day one (with a new driver). However, even Rise of the Tomb Raider which was the follow up to Tomb Raider (that worked on day one with new drivers) did not work. It took AMD nearly a month to get it right and I wasn't the only one having issues with it. Damien C is an SLI user and reported lots of problems with SLI. You need to remember that it's always been the same. If SLI or Crossfire is to work then the game MUST be coded to work with it. If it's not there is only so much AMD and Nvidia can do. Back when we were getting 360 "ports" (there's no such thing but that's what people call them) work had to be done to get the game running on a PC. Basically they take a bunch of code and then write a bunch of stuff to make that code work on a PC. I guess whilst they were doing that they were adding in Crossfire/SLI support. Support for both has literally died since these new consoles came out. Coincidence? no, I don't think so. I think what is basically happening now is these console "ports" are far closer to running on a PC once they are made to run on consoles which means even less work by the devs to get them over to the PC. So much less work, in fact, that they don't have to bother rewriting large portions of the code (and especially how the graphics are handled). As such, you tell me; why the fudge would you bother as a company to spend a day/week/month or more coding in support for 1% of PC gamers? why would you spend money when you know your code works on one GPU? *that* is the issue here. These devs are not paid to add that code in and they know their product will sell without that support so why spend money on it? of course, in the past Nvidia and AMD have snuggled up to game devs and got them to add in all of this support, but just lately that seems to have gone for a burton. Mostly likely because these new console games are so easy to "port" that they simply CBA. As I say, back when you had to use different libraries to cross code a game and APIs and so on it was probably easier to do CFX/SLI whilst you were at it. I could be wrong, but if I am then it's one hell of a coincidence that new console ports come out and none of them support more than one GPU. THE most damning piece of evidence is the Radeon Pro Duo. It is clearly slated as not being a gaming card in any shape or form.
I spent about two weeks knocking up a repository for games that work or don't work in Crossfire or SLI. I then got to everything in and around BLOPS III and none of it worked. I waited, then waited, then waited some more and in the end I sold my 4k monitor conceding that basically I had wasted my money on a second GPU and it was over. Since then I have dropped down to 1440p on one card and it's been marvelous. The funny thing is most old games don't need two cards. I've never EVER been one to agree with low to mid range multi GPU set ups any way, because if the tech doesn't work your one card is not enough to run everything maxed (see also SM's GTX 960s). I've only ever used it for a FPS boost and never as something that I absolutely must have working in order to get the benefits. At some point in time last year there was a survey carried out on how many users were using multiple GPU. Crossfire and SLI added up to about 3% of the population. That's pretty telling, man.
Are you sure? It only mentions Sound Purity 2 which I think is a Realtek chip. I too have been looking into going X99M but it is difficult to find a perfect board. On the Gigabyte and ASUS boards the M.2 slot only runs at x2 speeds. Whilst on the EVGA board it completely disables the bottom PCI slot if you use the M.2. The only boards which run the M.2 slot at x4 speeds without impacting the PCI slots are those from ASRock. Which wouldn't be my preferred manufacturer.
Glad I cam back to this thread as I have been looking at adding an M2 to my proposed build. Will need to check out your info. Thanks. http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=303293
