pci-e x1... surely not?

[Gray]

Hi,

The Northbridge fan on my Asus A8N-sli deluxe died last week, so I replaced it with a Zalman passive heatsink. Problem is the heatsink is so big my 7800GTX doesn't fit in the "normal" slot it was in. It fits in the other slot, which is where I put it, but in the Nvidia control panel, the bus is shown as "PCI Express x 1".

Surely it should be "x 16"?

Is this because I'm using the other (perhaps incorrect) PCI-express slot? If so, I'm going to have to remove my mobo again!

Help!

Gray

 

[Tetras]

What does it get in a 3D Mark version?

If your card is still scoring well and doing fine in games then just ignore it.

 

[Combat squirrel]

go into your bios and change the pci-e slots options from 16-2-1-1 to 8-1-1-8

 

[Gray]

go into your bios and change the pci-e slots options from 16-2-1-1 to 8-1-1-8

Can't find anywhere in my BIOS any pci-e settings... Are they definitely there?

 

[Gray]

2840 in 3dmark06... not very good is it..!

 

[Combat squirrel]

what mainboard is it ? you may need to physically change the jumpers and/or sli 'switch' on the mainboard to change the pci-e lines

 

[Gray]

what mainboard is it ? you may need to physically change the jumpers and/or sli 'switch' on the mainboard to change the pci-e lines

Asus a8n-sli deluxe

 

[Combat squirrel]

Asus a8n-sli deluxe

Looking at a pic of it, it has a SLI 'board thing', look inside your PC, there is a pic of it here:

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=148&model=375&modelmenu=1

Its sitting right between the PCI-E slots, u need to flip it over into 'sli mode' to enable 2 8x PCI-E lanes, then your vid card should run at 8x PCI-E in the lower slot

EDIT: Make sure you can run 1 vid card on the 'secondary' pci-e slot alone, usually sli has 2 vid cards in it, if it fails to boot you my HAVE to put it in the top slot and think of somet make it fit

 

[Gray]

Hmmm... I had that idea too, so I just span the little card thingy round and switched on. I'm not getting x 8, but shouldn't I be able to get x 16?

Is the only way I can get x 16 by using the "primary port"?

If so, I'm going to need a much smaller Northbridge cooler.

And that means I'm going to have to take my motherboard out again. Argh!

 

[Naffa]

Yeah. To get 16x you'll need to use the primary slot, or the one you were before. You can enable SLI (I think) and get 8x per slot which is better than 1x. But to get 16x you'll need to run in the main one. But the performance loss is minimal so don't get too worried.

 

[Gray]

Yeah. To get 16x you'll need to use the primary slot, or the one you were before. You can enable SLI (I think) and get 8x per slot which is better than 1x. But to get 16x you'll need to run in the main one. But the performance loss is minimal so don't get too worried.

Just ran 3dmark06 and got 4328. I'm sure I had well over 5000 at x16.

Should I RMA the dying ASUS Northbridge cooler, or just buy another kind of cooler that's smaller than my Zalman one? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.