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GEN3 Support on SB-E

I thought pci-e 3.0 only came with Ivybridge anyway. SB-E came before Ivy so even though the board has the correct slots it would'nt be available due to the cpu not providing the support. Should be when Ivy-E comes out though.
 
Yep mine is affected. It is pretty clear the SB-Es were not really designed to enable proper gen3 performance. Whilst it "works", it doesn't have consistent frame rates for many users.
 
I think the trouble is SB-E had a 'draft' PCI-E 3.0 support before the spec was officially finalised and something changed, something to do with latency/timings and it's not 100% supported anymore. When the platform first came out it was advertised as "8GT/s PCI-E" and not 3.0 but Intel don't even advertise it as that now, they only say that it supports 2.0.

The first real wind we got of it was when NVidia very responsibly acted by limiting their cards to PCI-E 2.0 because any stability issues would likely be seen as a GPU problem, NVidia got a bit of flak for basically being proactive in protecting their customers from possible issues.

Running in 8GT/s mode is at the users own risk and looking back I'm wondering if this is the reason I had such a torrid time with the 7970 as this is the platform I was using it with.
 
I would have to agree with what MMJ uk has posted, as from what I understand from reading various articles I can only summarise that at some point during the final phase to deployment of the SB-E cpu that pci-e 3.0 had change so on deployment of sb-e it no long had full 3.0 support. now that being said it could be possible that intel could have fix it the issue after initial run of sb-e cpu. but if that not the case then it would be fixed in the ivy-e release due out some point q4 of 2013 to q2 of 2014. it would be nice if someone had a 3970x cpu as that was latest sb-e to be released and test it to see if it has full pci-e 3.0 support.
 
My GTX 690s have always been fine on X79 and PCI-E 3.0

The Titans seem to run a lot better and more stable with PCI-E 2.0 when benching
 
Not tried PCI-E 2.0 on mine as 3.0 has been absolutely fine with single card and sli setups. Might give 2.0 a go though and see if I can actually notice any difference in terms of fluidity.
 
mmj_uk said:
I think the trouble is SB-E had a 'draft' PCI-E 3.0 support before the spec was officially finalised and something changed, something to do with latency/timings and it's not 100% supported anymore. When the platform first came out it was advertised as "8GT/s PCI-E" and not 3.0 but Intel don't even advertise it as that now, they only say that it supports 2.0.

The first real wind we got of it was when NVidia very responsibly acted by limiting their cards to PCI-E 2.0 because any stability issues would likely be seen as a GPU problem, NVidia got a bit of flak for basically being proactive in protecting their customers from possible issues.

Running in 8GT/s mode is at the users own risk and looking back I'm wondering if this is the reason I had such a torrid time with the 7970 as this is the platform I was using it with.
Click to expand...

There was also the issue with AMD and X79 board that was later fixed in some drivers. I think it affected Crossfire and/or Eyefinity systems worst though.
 
I do believe there can be issues with SB-E and PCI-E 3.0, but it can be a matter of luck, because I used to run PCI-E 3.0 + X79 patch + 3x GTX 670 on my Gigabyte X79UD3 + Core i7 3820 without any issues. But when I upgraded the CPU to a Core i7 3930K, I would get instant freezes and crashes with PCI-E 3.0 enabled - PCI-E 2.0 was rock solid. Newest BIOS didn't do anything.

After I swapped the old Gigabyte X79UD3 out with the Asus P9X79 Pro and installed the Core i7 3930K, I haven't had any issues with PCi-E 3.0 + X79 patch + 3x GTX 670 cards.
 
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Weirdly skyrim with the newer drivers is now fine with pcie 2 whilst it was a flicker fest on 3. Suppose it must have been pci 3 :S
 
andybird123 said:
I had to drop my oc by 100mhz to get pcie3 stable, but the boost in fps in games was worth it
Click to expand...

I noticed that too, then 8 Pack recommended using pcie2 for benching with 4 cards and it worked (I am guessing this is what he does with his GTX 680s and HD 7970s).

The thing I don't understand is the GTX 690 is a year old but mine do not have any problems with pcie3 on X79.
 
This may sound silly but for all those who enabled PCI-E 3.0, did you actually enable it through the registry as well as switching to "gen 3" in bios? For me, it only works if I change the appropriate registry values. Switching to gen 3 in bios only still shows my cards as running PCI-E 2.0
 
For the GTX 670, 680 and Titan you need to do the registry hack.

The GTX 690 is plug and play, and will run @pcie3 as soon as you put it in an X79 mobo.
 
Kaapstad said:
I noticed that too, then 8 Pack recommended using pcie2 for benching with 4 cards and it worked (I am guessing this is what he does with his GTX 680s and HD 7970s).

The thing I don't understand is the GTX 690 is a year old but mine do not have any problems with pcie3 on X79.
Click to expand...

yeah, I would imagine on single screen it could make it easier, but on 7680x1440 I definitely get better frames with it switched on :)
 
Kaapstad said:
I noticed that too, then 8 Pack recommended using pcie2 for benching with 4 cards and it worked (I am guessing this is what he does with his GTX 680s and HD 7970s).

The thing I don't understand is the GTX 690 is a year old but mine do not have any problems with pcie3 on X79.
Click to expand...

Isn't it because the GTX 690 has a bridge chip on the card that natively runs PCI-E 3.0 and that hasn't caused any issues in regards to the X79 platform ?.

I use the nVidia X79 registry patch.
 
My 7970's run fine in PCI 3.0 on my x79 system and I have tried both and there is a difference.
 
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