PCI-E speeds slower than they should be.

[Bubbleawsome]

I own a Dell studio XPS 8100 with the stock intel mobo with 1 pci slot, 1 pci-e 2.1 that is either 1x, 2x or 4x and 1 pci-e 2.1 16x. The smaller pci-e is filled with my network card, while the x16 has my 3.0 hd 7770 in it. During any type of load, this happens.

I don't think it bottlenecks my hd 7770 but I am looking at either a 7850 or 7870xt/7930 and I worry about that.

I think it is kinda like running in CF or SLI where if you have x4 x16 slots and they are all filled it would run x4 x4, but why is it pci-e 1.1? I have never updated my BIOS, and I don't really want to, I am using the 13.6 beta drivers though.

 

[cmdrdredd]

1) See if your BIOS allows you to force PCIe link speed.
2) Try reseating the card. If that doesn't work then
3) Update the BIOS. If that doesn't work then
4) Try a different card if you can.

Those are the steps I would take. My board did that with my GTX 670 but reseating the card fixed it and perhaps a later BIOS revision had a compatibility fix.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

1) No.
2) Already have.
3) *screams and runs away*
4) No other card.

So, #3 then. How would I do that?

EDIT: Also, is 1.1 limiting anything right now? Will it?

 

[cmdrdredd]

1) No.
2) Already have.
3) *screams and runs away*
4) No other card.

So, #3 then. How would I do that?

EDIT: Also, is 1.1 limiting anything right now? Will it?

It limits the bandwidth available to your card. It has to be some BIOS compatibility. Updating the bios should be pretty simple. There is probably some info about this on dell's support site. I will admit to not being familiar with the process for dell mobos.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Try disabling the power management feature for PCIe or setting your power profile to high performance. Then run GPU-Z and see what it says. It has a feature to "wake" the link speed next to where its reported.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

Try disabling the power management feature for PCIe or setting your power profile to high performance. Then run GPU-Z and see what it says. It has a feature to "wake" the link speed next to where its reported.

Ah, once I ran the render it woke up to 2.0, but not 2.1. I guess I'll check dell's BIOS updates now.

 

[StrangerGuy]

PCI-E 16x speeds will *not* matter if you aren't using a multi GPU setup. I won't lose sleep about it.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Ah, once I ran the render it woke up to 2.0, but not 2.1. I guess I'll check dell's BIOS updates now.

PCIe 2.1 is a subset of PCIe 2.0 with some of the management features of 3.0 and is the same speed as regular 2.0. Don't bother. It will not affect performance. You need an Ivy Bridge i5 and higher or Haswell CPU for PCIe 3.0. Nehalem, Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge i3's do not support it.