My motherboard has a pci-e x16 slot, but the control panel says..

What chipset is this?

NVIDIA nForce650 SLI Chipset


I think it's that. I'm kinda scrub so let me know if that's not what you're looking for.

Does it by any chance say 8x 2.0? For some reason my card is either detected as 16x or 8x 2.0. They are equivalent in bandwidth and my card is 2.0 compatible (but not my MB) so I guess it just gets confused. Try other scanning programs like PCWizard or GPU-Z.

What motherboard do you have?

nope just x8 bus.
Where could I get pcwizard or gpu-z?

it's dells xps 630

google it

Well the Nforce 600 series does not support PCIe 2.0, but the 8800GT does. So running at 8x is running at 8x, PCIe 2.0 isnt even part of the equation because the board dosent support it. I used to have an EVGA 680i before I knew nvidia chipsets were bad news, and I remember in the BIOS you could adjust the speed betweeen 4, 8, and 16. Maybe go look for that.

nVidia’s 650i SLI chip set

Ok before I jump into my bios to look for the speed adjustment, any precautions should I consider? I've overclocked my processor to 3.0ghz from 2.4ghz so I am familiar with it

Well all you are looking for is bandwidth/speed adjustments for the PCIe, dont mess with anything else. I cant tell you where the setting would be unfortunately, but it should be in either Advanced, or onboard devices.

Dowload and run CPUZ, under the Mainboard tab at the bottom it has a box for Graphics Interface and it will show you what you card is running at and what the slot is capable of.

Will increasing it (if i can) make my motherboard a lot hotter?

yea it's running at x8 but max supported is x16

Do you have more than 1 PCI-E slot? it might be that 1 is 16x and 1 is 8x.

no 2 pci-es x16

uh how do I raise my slot to x16? the only thing I see involving my slots is a listing of both pci-e slots and they're at 100mhz, which can be raised or lowered

is the 100mhz thing the speed adjustments for my slot cards?

There are no 650i boards with 2 16x PCI-E slots, the 650i chipset doesn't have enough lanes to support 2 cards @ 16x. When they list 2 x 16x PCI-E slots they are talking about the physical size of the slot not the speed. The 650i has either 1@16x and 1@8x or both @8x in SLI. Some boards are capable of switching the slots between 16x and 8x and some are set at a certain speed. The two slots on your board should be different colors which would identify 1 as 16x and the other as 8x.

The 100mhz is your PCI-E frequency leave it there.

oh! ok. one is blue (the one my cards in) the other is black. i'll try switching and see what happens. thank you!

Your card should be in the top port.

Also download GPUZ and check it out.

On gpu, where does it tell me that it's on the x16 bus?

On ROP it says 16 (idk what that is
but on bus interface it says PCI-E 2.0 X16 @ 8

ROPs (Raster Operator units) are units which perform various raster operations. More ROPs will lead to a higher fill rate (GPixel/s).

Did you switch the slots?

yes  

wait do I have a pci-e 2.0 x16 slot or no?

no

Your card is meant to be in the blue one.
This is a full review of your board. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asu...

Mactronix