i5 3570k and sli 970 strix

[DeeZyDuZiT]

i just upgraded to the sli 970s
i found out i was only using half of the cards usage due to my motherboard pci-e slots only allowing 1 at x16 or 2 at x8.
my question is, should i just buy a motherboard that supports 2 x16 pci-e slots and keep my i5 3750k? or will my cpu bottleneck my gpus?
or just go the amd route and buy the 990fx sabertooth mobo and the amd fx 8350.

specs:
I5 3570 K
SLI asus strix 970
16gb corsair 1600
evga 850w supernova
h80i wtr coolin
asrock z77 extreme 4 mobo

 

[burdenbound]

Even at x8 your performance should be just fine. Unless your actually getting half the frames you are expecting you should be fine.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

x8 doesnt mean half your usage. No current card to my knowelege can use the full bandwith of a pcei x16 slot, I think 2x 8x cound mean mayne 1-3 fps diff with those cards over 16x x2

 

[DeeZyDuZiT]

Even at x8 your performance should be just fine. Unless your actually getting half the frames you are expecting you should be fine.

im deffinately getting bottlenecked, when in sli i am only getting 30% usage on each card runing bf4 no vsync, im gettin performance as if i only had 1 970. even in bf3 i can barely stay above 100fps , which i was getting that with a single gtx 760 4gb

 

[DeeZyDuZiT]

x8 doesnt mean half your usage. No current card to my knowelege can use the full bandwith of a pcei x16 slot, I think 2x 8x cound mean mayne 1-3 fps diff with those cards over 16x x2

also when under load, im only getting half the memory usage of both cards
iunderstand it will only use what it needs, but i know im not gettin even half performace of these cards, i might as well just pull one out and use a single gpu

 

[Deleted member 362816]

x8 doesnt mean half your usage. No current card to my knowelege can use the full bandwith of a pcei x16 slot, I think 2x 8x cound mean mayne 1-3 fps diff with those cards over 16x x2

also when under load, im only getting half the memory usage of both cards
iunderstand it will only use what it needs, but i know im not gettin even half performace of these cards, i might as well just pull one out and use a single gpu

Try one card and let us know the performance.

 

[DeeZyDuZiT]

x8 doesnt mean half your usage. No current card to my knowelege can use the full bandwith of a pcei x16 slot, I think 2x 8x cound mean mayne 1-3 fps diff with those cards over 16x x2

also when under load, im only getting half the memory usage of both cards
iunderstand it will only use what it needs, but i know im not gettin even half performace of these cards, i might as well just pull one out and use a single gpu

Try one card and let us know the performance.

will try single card tonight, and will post results.

 

[burdenbound]

Can you run some benchmarking software versus a game for testing?

 

[g0tsl33p]

I do not have an answer yet either, but for discussion I am interested in your bench/game results Deez. I am wanting a similar setup, went with Fatal1ty 16, 16, PCI Motherboard, with AMD 8-core 8mb L3 Cache. Side note, where will I bottleneck?

Need to buy SSD, RAM, and GPU(s)

 

[DeeZyDuZiT]

I do not have an answer yet either, but for discussion I am interested in your bench/game results Deez. I am wanting a similar setup, went with Fatal1ty 16, 16, PCI Motherboard, with AMD 8-core 8mb L3 Cache. Side note, where will I bottleneck?

Need to buy SSD, RAM, and GPU(s)

i have had a breakthrough in performance, after upgrading to windows 8.1 and a fresh install of drivers etc.
i am getting alot more usage out of the cards, i found that if my in game setting arent totally maxed out it wont push the cards at all. but when maxed out the cards both go into boost faze and sync just fine with msi afterburner,
the pcie slots are still at x8 x8 but usage has drastically improved along with fps and clock speeds and oc

but i am still getting a slight bottleneck from my cpu.
my cpu usage will be totally maxed out 100% at 4.4ghz even just playing battlefield3

so my next step is i will be to upgrade.
so all in all i will be upgrading to the i7 5930k and an asrock fatality x99x killer mobo

thank you for all your help and concerns