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GPU running at 4x only...

pgi947

pgi947

pgi947

Soldato
Joined
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Doing a little digging about today I noticed my primary GPU will only run at 4x.

With cards in slots 1 & 5 on my motherboard they should both be running at 16x.

Same happens with Gen3 enabled or disabled.

I'll be doing a full CMOS clear tomorrow to see if this cures it.

Started a thread on the MSI user-to-user forum, its been suggested the GPU may be faulty, personally I've never seen or even heard of a faulty GPU failing to run at the desired PCI speed - http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=169262.0

Anyone any other suggestions? Getting quite annoyed with MSI's rather lacklustre support on motherboards.

MB: MSI Xpower II X79, latest bios v2.2
GPU's: 2 x MSI OC 7970's.

Oh and I put this thread in here as, at the moment, its a suspected GPU fault.
 
Did you disable the secondary GPU to check if it got back to speed? Also, I see you did a CMOS reset but I assume you checked to verify in the BIOS speed states X16?
 
Yep, with secondary GPU disabled its still only running at X4 3.0 (or 2.0 with gen3 disabled).

No real options (that I can see) in the bios for selecting PCI bus speed, PCI subsystem settings give me:

PCIE GEN3 - Enable/Disable
PCI Latency Timer - 32 - 248 bus clocks and everything inbetween, set at 32.

Edit: I may try flashing back to bios v1.5, and if that fixes it I'm officially drop kicking this board into the sun.
 
Have you tried taking the battery out, waiting a good 30 mins, putting back to reset the CMOS that way? Shoudn't be neccesary in this day and age, but I would try it anyway.

EDIT: Nevermind, I noticed your doing that tomorrow. :)
 
silly question:

I thought the x4, x8, x16 stuff was how the pins were arranged on the mobo

I also understood they were to provide power to the GPU

If the GPU is under full load but the 6+8pin pcie connectors are supplying enough power, does it need to increase from 4x to 16x?

:)
 
Yep :p

The last time I checked this was on v1.5 shortly after I finished building and it was indeed running at 16/16 then, the only thing that has changed is the bios revision.
 
panyan said:
silly question:

I thought the x4, x8, x16 stuff was how the pins were arranged on the mobo

I also understood they were to provide power to the GPU

If the GPU is under full load but the 6+8pin pcie connectors are supplying enough power, does it need to increase from 4x to 16x?

:)
Click to expand...


It is, if you look at the rear solder joints on a motherboard you can tell which slots should run at which speed, the Xpower II is supposed to run at 16/16 dual, 16/8/16 tri or 16/8/8/8 quad, either way it should be X16 on the top slot.

About the PSU side of things I really don't know, I blame my old HX1000 for everything and its never its fault :p

What I can try tomorrow too, is removing/swapping power cables, I can also manually disable PCIE lanes on my board via some switches. Should be worth a punt.
 
Re-seating may be a last effort if all else fails, as due to the nature of my layout, I'd pretty much have to drain my loop to do so :(
 
This might sound strange, but try checking for dust/dirt in the PCI-E slot. I had a problem with my 6950 running at 1x only a while back; after some head-scratching it turned out there was a tiny piece of dust blocking one of the pins.
 
After I've tried a cmos clear, swapping cables and disabling slots I'll see if I can dislodge the cards enough to give the lanes a blow out too.

So much for getting a weekend of gaming in before the newborn arrives :rolleyes:
 
ok then...

CMOS clear - nothing
Bottom card disabled and power removed - nothing

Will try rolling back to bios v1.5 shortly.

Tbh if I'm going to take this rig apart just to test if a slot is working or not I may just sell the board and go Asus.
 
We are now running at x16/x16 3.0....

All I did was swap the power cables around, so I have two theories....

1. The top GPU wasn't quite far enough into the slot, pushing the power connectors in gave it better contact.

2. My PSU is dual rail, the primary GPU was on the second rail (full modular side) and was failing to kick into a higher power state while the card that was on the primary rail (with motherboard and CPU connectors) was kicking up to a higher power state.

Any other theories welcome.
 
Are you sure the link speed is not being reduced for power saving reasons? Windows will do this by default unless you stop it by going into the power plan settings and setting the PCI-E link option to off. GPU-z will tell you the current and maximum supported link width for the current slot.

Regardless it isn't a big deal, you lose about 1% performance from PCI-E 3.0 4x vs 3.0 full. Not worth the hassle of redoing your system for what could easily by a software configuration issue.
 
Yep, fairly sure my PSU just likes to troll me from time to time to let me know its still alive and kicking. The way this thing is going, if/when it finally does die, I'm going to have to give it a ceremonial burial.
 
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