Gigabyte doesn’t play around with fake slots on its Z97X-Gaming GT, instead placing four PCIe x16 slots cable of at least PCIe 3.0 x8 mode and filling the spaces between with PCIe 2.0 connectivity. The I/O panel is similarly filled up with six USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports. Gigabyte even classes that area up with gold-plated audio and video connections

the Z97X Gaming can also put two triple-slot cards in a standard ATX seven-slot chassis, gaining access to one of the PCIe x1 slots in that configuration. Unlike ASRock's board, this one doesn’t shift a pair of cards down to x8 bandwidth whenever an Ultra M.2 drive is present, mostly because it doesn’t support Ultra M.2. All sixteen PCIe 3.0 lanes are permanently connected to graphics slots, its automatic Dual BIOS can be either a blessing or a curse (depending on what problem activates the feature), so it allows owners of its premium products to switch that feature off. Another switch lets you choose between firmware ROMs in single-BIOS mode.

The Z97X-Gaming GT includes four SATA cables (two have a single 90° end), two-, three-, and four-way SLI bridges and a CrossFire bridge

•  Socket: LGA1150
• Chipset: Intel Z97
• USB 2.0: eight USB 2.0 ports, two at the rear panel and six available through three headers on the motherboard
• USB 3.0: eight USB 3.0 ports, six on the motherboard rear panel and two available through a header
• Slots: four PCI Express 3.0/2.0 x16 slots (working at x16/x0/x16/x0, x16/x0/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8), and three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots
• Memory: four DDR3-DIMM sockets (up to DDR3-3200, 32 GiB maximum)
• On-board LAN: two Gigabit Ethernet ports