Will 2 GTX 970s fit my build

[smush]

Seems like a whole lot of rubbish advice to me TBH.

Some links to look over to back up what I'm saying:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8227/d...and-i5-4690k/5
http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia...440/index.html
http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia...-4k/index.html

And in regards to PCIe scaling: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/I...caling/11.html

See how much of a massive difference it all makes?

I'm not sure how to make sense of the first 3 links?

[watercooled]

The first one is Anandtech showing SLI performance on a number of CPUs. F1 is a particularly CPU-heavy game, but even there, there isn't much of a difference amongst the i5/7 CPUs. For most of the other games the difference is even less. Also bear in mind these benchmarks are being run at 1080p, and the framerates well above 100 i.e. the load is being weighted more towards the CPU than you expect in real gaming; the differences will be less again at higher res, and you're not going to see a difference between 103 and 109 fps anyway. Presumably you'll be gaming above 1080p or you might not see much of a benefit in SLI for the majority of games.

In the TT articles, they're again comparing SLI performance between CPUs, and have both 780 and 980 numbers. The 4930k is a considerably more expensive 6 core (12 thread) CPU, but you can see at 2560x1440 the difference in performance is mostly marginal, with the two CPUs claiming their own victories on different games. At 4k, the 8350 actually seems to perform better for the most part. However note that even where the more expensive CPU was performing notably better at 1440 (e.g. 980 in grid and dirt), the difference is nulled or reversed at 4k, hence my point about lower res showing more of a difference.

[smush]

I think it was this thread http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18618052 that lead me to think I would be better with an Xeon 5650 6 core than my 4 core i7 930

[watercooled]

I've just had a quick look as I'm on my way out now, but I see some CPU benchmarks - bear in mind differences in CPU benchmarks do not equate to differences in gaming performance, as the CPU is rarely such a limiting factor.

I've been looking to find something comparing your CPU and found this: http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages...review,11.html

The 965 is essentially a higher clocked version of your CPU, and the 3960X is a Sandy Bridge Extreme CPU which is newer again than the Xeon you're looking at. Note how they're essentially identical in performance at >1920x1200.

[smush]

On the TT articles they are benching a AMD and Intel CPU but you cannot compare them because they are different architectures

[watercooled]

That's besides the point. What it shows is that very different price range processors have marginal impact on gaming performance.

The observation about the fx cpu overtaking at 4k was merely coincidental and I didn't meant to imply that would apply to your system.

The claims that your cpu will be a terrible bottleneck or that you'll see no benefit from sli because of it are frankly absurd, and I see nothing to back up such claims.

[SHOGUNXSHINOBI]

Is it about getting the g1/evga ftw/msi, just throwin it out there?

[sauri]

I've got an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G card in an FT02 myself - the card is actually quite thin for a two-slot card, more like 1 and two-thirds I can recommend the MSI card, it's silent in Windows (fans don't spin), and virtually silent when gaming - I can't hear it over the three AP181 fans in the FTO2.

How hot it runs in FT02? *Have you tried to overclock it? I heard those heatpipes don't perform well in vertical orientation.