EVGA z97 Classified - Questions.

[gdourado]

Hello, how are you?
I have a few questions about the EVGA Z97 Classified board:

I am thinking about changing my board.
My current board does not have a good layout for SLI and Crossfire. The spacing of the PCI 16x slots is really tight.

I am thinking about the Z97 classifiied.
I considered upgrading to X99, but the price of the CPU and DDR4 memory turns me off.
I already have a good 1150 CPU and 16GB DDR3-2400 G.Skill TridentX CL10 ram.

My questions mainly are:

- How is the PCIe Spacing for 2 GPU setups?
Can I space them with GPU one on slot 1 and GPU 2 on slot 4?

- Is a crossfire or sli setup running dual x16 through the PLX PEX8747 faster than a standard Z97 board running dual x8 from the CPU?

- How is the overclocking ability of the board?

- And finally, what are your general thoughts on the board?

Thank you for your help.

Cheers!

 

[Ryanrenesis]

For your first question, I think only the first two slots on the Classified mobo is used for 16x. The last two slots are 8x.

I might be wrong.

I'm interpreting this data from EVGA website:
PCI-E Slot Arrangement – 1x16, 2x16, 3x8, 4x8

 

[gdourado]

Was also looking at the MSI Z97 Xpower AC:

It also has a PLX bridge and the slots can be:

For single card use slot 2 that bypasses the PLX and it's 16X direct to the CPU.

For two cards, slot 1 and 4, so plenty of spacing.
And it can have up to 4 gpus.

It is a bit cheaper than the EVGA Classified.
What's your input?

Cheers!

 

[ocer9999]

First impression is wow, EVGA board looks really cool!

 

[Puffnstuff]

The one advantage of the classified is the dual 8 pin power feeds plus you can manage the power feed to the pcie slots via the bios.