GTX 980 terrible on Mini ITX mobos

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KnoVolt

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Nov 9, 2013
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Here is some info at a previous thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2992757/gtx-980-underperforming.html

So first I had my GTX 980 in my ATX build. Worked perfect, but decided to build in a mini itx case. First time testing the GTX 980 was performing worse than a GTX 950. Tried many things as you can see in the thread link. Also tried to test it in Another mini itx board, which produced the same terrible result.

So I then decided to put the GTX 980 back into the ATX mobo. (mind, everything was the same: cpu, ssd boot drive, ram, cooler, psu etc). And it worked like it always has been!

So what happened? I initially thought it was the GTX 980 being faulty because I tested it on 2 different rigs/mobos. But they were both mini itx boards. I've never updated my ATX mobo's bios and it works perfect. I tried card on the pre-installed bios on the ITX boards as well as updating them to the latest versions - all still resulted in super poor performance from the 980.

BTW, GPU-Z confirms the 980 was running on a working PCIE x16 3.0 lane on both ITX boards as well as the working ATX board.

I'm honestly at a lost here... I really want to put everything back into my ITX build, but this is just so bizarre.
 
Solution
dudmont
you've got the bios tweaked for using an external card, and the slot set 16x(even if it was 8x, it wouldn't make much difference), as well. I've seen weird things in my life, in regards to computers. I once had a system that the soundcard had to be in one particular slot, or it wouldn't work, even though any of the 8bit or 16bit ISA slots should have worked, by definition. Sometimes you have a card, that just doesn't play nice with a certain mobo. without another graphics card to test that mobo, you can't write it off yet. even though it sure looks like something weird with the mobo.
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KnoVolt

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Nov 9, 2013
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CPU is 4770k
ATX: Asus Z97-a
ITX: Gigabyte H97N-Wifi
ITX 2nd: MSI A88XI (using a AMD A6 cpu)

Trouble is ATX works, both ITX makes the 980 suuuper bad. Does my GTX 980 not like ITX boards or did I do something wrong with my ITX builds TWICE in a row?
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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The Z97 chipset lets your 4770K run faster via overclocking.
You might have the optimized defaults set in the bios.

On a H97 chipset no such boost in cpu speed is possible so your cpu might be the limitation.
I bet if you had used a Z97 based motherboard, all would have run well.

To check this out, run cpu-z and look at what multiplier is in use when gaming.
On the Z97, I expect the multiplier to be greater than the stock 35.
If, under load, the H97 multiplier is 35, it is doing as well as it can at stock.

CPU speed can be important on some games such as sims, mmo, and strategy games.
The AMD processors, by comparison are abysmally slow so I would discount that test.
Fast action shooters should not be much impacted.

 
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KnoVolt

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Nov 9, 2013
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Nope, should most likely not be CPU. CPU is OCed to 4.2Ghz on ATX, and stock on ITX. BUT, I only run gpu stress tests, and cpu is either not being stresses (because I'm not testing it), or runs perfectly fine at target speeds when needed.

For example, I ran 3d mark fire strike. Get a score of 14,200 points on ATX build. On ITX build the graphics performance suffers sooo bad, and I get a score of anywhere from 3000-5000. That is less than 1/3 of what people should get with a GTX 980+4770k! Like holy damn that is too big of a difference for it to be CPU. (And it was the graphics score that was super low too).

Unigine Heaven was the same. ATX build, score of 17,000 points on 1080p max settings. On ITX build I get 950-1050 score on exactly the same settings.
 
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KnoVolt

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GTX 980 EVGA Superclocked Edition ACX 2.0 fan design.

Temps never goes past 70 degrees celcius despite overclocking even further. To make sure it is not throttling I even ramped the fans up to 90% at all times during stress tests. Auto fans speed, temps were 67-70 degrees during stress test. 90% fan speed at all times, temps were like 30 degrees during stress tests.

Core clocked/memory clock targets met perfectly. GPU usage perfectly at 96-99% during full load/stress tests.
 
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dudmont

dudmont

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Feb 23, 2015
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You've answered the the thought I had. You're getting crappy performance, even though the monitoring software says you're not, based on throughput and gpu usage. Do you have another video card, you could throw in the ITX mobo?
 
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KnoVolt

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Nov 9, 2013
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Unfortunately, not at the moment. Alternatively, is there anything that I could have missed? I mean I had fresh windows, latest nvidia drivers, stock bios, latest bios and redid all of that after using DDU to remove the drivers.
 
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dudmont

dudmont

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Feb 23, 2015
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you've got the bios tweaked for using an external card, and the slot set 16x(even if it was 8x, it wouldn't make much difference), as well. I've seen weird things in my life, in regards to computers. I once had a system that the soundcard had to be in one particular slot, or it wouldn't work, even though any of the 8bit or 16bit ISA slots should have worked, by definition. Sometimes you have a card, that just doesn't play nice with a certain mobo. without another graphics card to test that mobo, you can't write it off yet. even though it sure looks like something weird with the mobo.
 
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