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i7 5820k worth it for gaming?

rtho782 said:
To me the big benefit of x99 is the ability to do 3/4way SLI.

On Z97 you need one of the very rare motherboards with a PLX chip which also adds latency and doesn't improve total bandwidth to the CPU/System RAM.

Every so often I consider a 3rd 980, if I was on x99 I'd probably have done it but it's too much hassle to side-grade the motherboard etc.
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+1
Another way to put it is that X99 has more PCIe lanes. This allows for more than 2 way SLI and/or using a PCIe/M.2 SSD without gimping PCIe speed of the graphics card. Currently on a 16 lane Z97, installing a 4x M.2 SSD will reduce the 16x graphics card PCIe lane to 8x.

I will also add that 3/4 way SLI isn't really worth it. 2 way SLI doesn't always scale great and a lot of games don't even bother scaling properly with 3-way SLI. I those such games, you get the same/similar (or even worse) performance from 3-way SLI as you do 2 way SLI. There are a handful of games like Tomb Raider and Battlefiend 4 where 3-way SLI really shines, but unless you absolutely want 3 graphics cards and you play those few games a lot, just don't bother.

Recommendations when it comes to SLI... go for the most powerful single card for the same money. I.e. 970 SLI vs the newly released 980ti, might as well go for a single 980ti, though it price to performance is worse. 16 lanes is currently fine for 2-way SLI if one goes that route.

TLDR Go with i7-4790k/Z97 instead of i7-5820k/X99 or wait for Skylake.
 
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