I now fully understand the limitations of the architecture, I also fully understand that this board is equipped with numerous undocumented connections and features.  I also fully understand that the reason I chose this board was because it claimed 2 x x16 - I may be strange but I expect my tech to do what it claims it will do.

zkanuck
I agree they should amend their product advertising and revise the manual to reflect what's now become more obvious re the Z97 limitations and EVGAs implementation of the somewhat mysterious PLX solution.
 
It's like EVGA has the same communication problems between their design engineers & marketing/support department as nVidia does! ;)
 

Yet EVGA tech support was the Gold Standard up until a few years ago - that is why I keep repeating - sad

CptSpig
The only way to get true x16 + x16 lanes=32 total is a X99 Board with a i7-5960X processor which has 40 lanes. It's not the board but the processor that does not have enough lanes. See this link and scroll down to expansion options-processor lanes. http://ark.intel.com/products/82930 If Intel made a processor for the Z97 chip set with 32 lanes you would get true x16 in SLI. Maybe the new 5th gen. processors will have 32 or more lanes. We can only hope.
 

would love to see 24 lanes on the Z series setup, because that would at least enable 3 way sli. I doubt they would go that far any time soon, because then they remove the need to X Series chips for a lot of people.

zildjian75

CptSpig
According to the PCI-E lane distribution slots 2 and 4 are for two way SLI Classified Board. 1 and 4 will also work but you need a long SLI Bridge.

 

PCI-E Slot Breakdown

PCI-E Lane Distribution

PE1 – x16 (x8 if PE2 is used)

PE2 – x16 (x8 if PE3 is used)

PE3 – x8

PE4 – x16 (x8 if PE6 is used)

PE5 – x1

PE6 – x8

The manual is incorrect Cpt.  Slots 2 & 4 is the only way to achieve x16/x16 on the Z97 Classy.

The manual is not incorrect. Slots 2 and 4 will give you 8 lanes each the plx chip actually expands the PCI-E lanes. The bottleneck is the processor it only has a total of 16 lanes. The Z97 Classified motherboard has a total of six device ports - five PCI-Express x16 slots and one PCI-Express x1 slot. For the PCI-Express x16 slots, the board supports full x16 bandwidth with a single card, x16 bandwidth with cards in the primary and secondary slots with two cards populated, x16 / x8 / x8 with cards populated in slots 1, 2, and 4, and x8 / x8 / x8 / x8 with cards populating four of the PCI-Express x16 slots. EVGA was able to accommodate 8x bandwidth in tri and quad-card operation using a PLX bridge chip sitting underneath the heat sink to the right of the PCI-Express slot area of the board. There is no processor out for the Z97 1150  platform with more than 16 lanes.

Combining three or four video cards on a Socket 1150 motherboard is, as said, not really possible. The trick involving the four lanes from the chipset is supported by AMD for CrossfireX, although it is definitely not recommended. Nvidia SLI simply refuses to work in this arrangement. Still, Socket 1150 motherboards with support for 3-way and 4-way SLI do exist. This is because manufacturers place a PCI-Express switch-chip on such boards, usually a PLX PEX8747. This chip is connected to the CPU through PCI-Express x16 and offers 32 lanes to video cards on the other side. This enables two cards to be controlled with 16 lanes each or four cards to be controlled with 8 lanes each.

The total bandwidth to the CPU naturally remains limited to the 16 GB/s offered by PCI-Express 3.0 x16. Because the PLX-chip can switch, it is possible for two installed cards to communicate at full speed, provided the other is not transferring data at the same time. More importantly, both cards can also send data to one another at PCI-Express x16 speed through the PLX chip. The same holds true when three or four cards have been installed, although in this case the speed naturally is limited to x8.

I am trying to put this to bed. People think it's the plx chip. The plx chip expands the lanes it's not the bottle neck. I am with you my machine is fast there is no game out there that slows it down.

Current gpu's can't even fill the x8 lanes, right?  Other than benchmarking purposes is it even needed?

Most definitely z 97 gives you the most bang for the buck

me as well, and a lot of new cpu tech is right around the corner (as always). The 1150 socket might be getting more cpu lanes direct to pci-e slots. Hopefully a bios fix will enable such an upgrade and not make me replace my motherboard.

I'll hold off for a while, I stick with the five year replacement game

Nosyashell
And here I buy this in February of 2016 and the manual and online specs show lanes 1 and 4 will give you 16x. I have 2 Titans in SLI and my junk Gigabyte board handled it (z87 even).

I would like to thank EVGA for using these past 2 years to update their manual and online specs so I could make an informed decision........

It shows lane 2 and 4 as x16 as well as lane 1, and lane 4. The specifications do not say to USE lane 1 and 4 for x16, they only show a picture that requires interpretation.

I agree, the instructions should be updated, EVGA rarely posts amended instruction manuals.

I run one titan x lane 1 so im good to go