Hi everyone I have been looking for an upgrade, my current mobo Asus m5a99x evo died. The ones I have in mind are : MSI z97 gaming 7 @ £136.46 amazon Asus z97 maximus hero VII @ £159 amazon Gigabyte ?? Gaming ?? The first priority for me is: OC capabilities Driver/BIOS support The CPU will be the i5 4690k or the new broadwell if it comes this month. I have an swifthech h220x and I will do extreme OC on it. This is mainly for gaming and some Sony Vegas render/edit. I want to ear you all My last Intel was an e6400. I'm back :banana:
Since it was found that Gigabyte reduce things like PWM phases on later revisions of their motherboards, I would avoid them or at least check extremely carefully on the revision and spec that you're buying. You should also look into the number of phases on the maximus hero, I believe the Z97 pro is better in that respect. I've heard good things about the MSI but can't really give any info on it.
I would pretty much avoid Gigabyte. Their bios support is pretty shoddy. Most z97 boards, and even X99 have USB boot issues as well as other deficiencies. Their tech support is "weak" as well. Asus would be my first choice...MSI, I don't have much to share.
Asus maximus VII hero is working good for me, with zero issues. Had this 4790k @ 5Ghz last night. Not stable lol but good enough to pass 3dmark firestrike. http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6521118 There are more options in the BIOS than I could ever use or more to the point know how to use. Looks great as well.
Had the chance to pull the trigger on the Maximus VII Hero just this past weekend, since Newegg had a rather good sale on it. That certainly was one of the better moves I've made yet.
I just went through 2x Maximus VII Heroes. Neither of them could run my 290x at PCI-E 16x 3.0, only 8x 3.0. I am looking at a different board myself.
And no other will either, I think.. Haswell cpu has 16 pcie lanes, Skylake will change that to 20 lanes. My mobo has 3x pcie 16x slots and it can do 8x8x4x
Strange, but its really a non issue. A 290X at 3.0 8X will have more than enough bandwidth to function at full strength.
I completely understand that and address it in my post: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=398701 It's the principal of the matter. Since the CPU can only address 16 lanes, and I want to upgrade to another 290x in crossfire, will I have issues running them dual at x8/x8? What about when I add the M.2 drive, and it shares that PCI-Ex bandwidth? The idea is, if I am already having issues from a second replacement new board, why keep it? I need full bandwidth support for the second card and the M.2 SSD in the future.
You're confusing the topic. A single 290x should be supported at full x16 3.0. If I had a secondary GPU, then it'd be cut down to x8/x8 in dual mode.
Well I see that not much support for the Gigabyte brand, but just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I just recently upgraded to the blue team and got the same CPU your getting and I grabbed the Gigabyte I have listed in my sys specs and it's been the greatest board I've had to date. It's been really good with Oc'n(got my 4690k at 4.5 very stable and cool with my little ol Coolermaster V6gt cooler). Booted first try and been running like a dream. Plus the sound is really good on it. This is my first Gigabyte board and so far so good(maybe I got lucky??)
Fair enough. I find it hard to believe you had *a defect* on two boards in a row, though. Unless you're populating one of the lower PCIE slots that shares lanes with the main two, or using some setting. I'm sure it's something silly.
I don't even have the sound card in there. There is nothing else on any of the PCI-E lanes except for the 290x. Here's a SS of the replacement ordered on April 14th:
I'm sorry for the wording. I don't mean that I don't believe you tested two boards. I just mean I don't believe this is an actual defect with the board itself, but rather an incompatibility somewhere. Either way, I can understand the frustration and the expectation for it to function as intended.
I just recently upgraded to my sabranco! I love the Sabertooth Z97 mark S soo much and the UEFI interface is awesome! Just wish i had a White camo gfx card to go with it... i highly recommend it BUT its expensive (like 280$)
