PCI-E only at x1?!

[Sumanji]

Hey,

Just playing around on my old man's Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop (C2D T5500, i945PM/ICH7, Mobility Radeon X1300 64MB), and noticed the PEG link is only running at x1 instead of x16?!

All the chipset and graphics drivers are properly installed afaik, and there is no option in the BIOS to change the link width manually. I assume this should be x16 or at least x8, although I guess it won't be drastically hurting an X1300.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Cheers,

Suman

 

[Bizarre]

Are you sure it's not dropping to x1 only when idle?

Run Furmark and keep gpuz open to see if it switches to x16 when underload.

 

[willhub]

PCI-E should not drop when idle, its not speedstep.

 

[Bizarre]

I know it's not speedstep, lol.

As a power/battery saving feature some laptops do drop the pcie bandwidth to x1 when idle though, especially when set to minimum performance to reserve battery life.

Nvidia's Powermizer for example can switch between x1 and x16, lowering power consumption/maximising battery life for applications that do not require the full x16 bandwidth.

Not saying it is the op's prob, I'm just saying it is possible.

Edit: Actually you can buy pci-e x1 desktop versions of the X1300, so it's possible your laptops PEG link is correct.

 

[Sel]

Check the bios and see if you can adjust the speed.