Litrily a week away from ordering my new machine. Its been a long time coming and im looking forward to finaly being able to play games at a good frame rate. However I cant chose between these two Mobo's as they both fit my needs somewhat.
The Z87 Maximus VI Extreme is a gorgeous board. Would fit me quite well but it has a few features I am not very pleased with. While the Z87-WS might not be as feature ritch but being a power user, modeling and such, a more solid board would be great.
In the future, Once I have more cash, I will be expanding my GPU arangement to 2-3 GPU's in SLI. I know that 3 SLI+ I should have a Extreme CPU but I am not willing to wait for Ivy-E and the extra $600+ for the upgrade would set me back a few more weeks. At the moment I have enough for everything except for a GPU but hey, I might be able to reclaim my old GTX 560 for the time being.
Now the issue is scaling. The Maximus has a PCI-e Scaling of 16, 8 8, 8 16 8 and 8 8 16 8. While the Z87-WS has a scaling of 16, 16 16, 16 8 8, 8 8 8 8. This I would believe would show that the Work station board has better scaling for GPU's with 3 way breaking even and 4 way unrealistic with a 4770k? I like the Maximus board a lot but with this, It apears that the WS is just a better choice.
Remember these mobo's are sister boards. They share similar design and quality.
Now the WS is about $100USD cheaper that the Maximus but is the WS as overclockable? And are the Features of the Maximus really worth $100?
Lastly, Is there a good place is Australia that I cant find that sells the WS for cheap. while the WS is cheaper by $100 in the US, The only places I have found here overcharge by $300. Making it $200 more than the Maximus. I can order and import from the US but that drops down the savings by 50% and I am already stretching my budget.