2.5 GT/s instead of 5.0 GT/s

[mortonww]

I had a Radeon 4870X2 that was recognized in BIOS as having a Link Speed of 5.0 GT/s in the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot.

I upgraded to a gtx 580 SC in the same slot and the link speed is reported as 2.5 GT/s.

How do I change this? Why is it not reporting the same Link Speed? Will this affect performance?

GPU-Z recognizes it as PCIe v2.0 x16 using x16, so am I fine? I haven't had a chance to run benchmarks yet. I'm posting this at work, so I will when I get home.

 

[jaquith]

PCIe 1.x 2.5GT/s 2Gb/s ~250MB/s ~8GB/s
PCIe 2.0 5.0GT/s 4Gb/s ~500MB/s ~16GB/s
DX58SO http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Motherboards/DX58SO/DX58SO-overview.htm

Just checking, I assume the GTX 580 is in the 'top' {closest to CPU} PCIe x16 slot -right?

GPU-Z reads that the PCIe slot 'is' electrically x16. If you're getting the GTX 580 being recognized in PCIe 1.x mode that effectively has it running in x8 vs x16 speed. I doubt this will be a bottleneck, but somethings not right. Maybe a BIOS flash or nVidia driver can correct this issue.

edit: Use Driver Sweeper and uninstall ALL GPU drivers and then reinstall the latest nVidia drivers -> http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

 

[mortonww]

Yeah, it's in the top slot.

Are you suggesting a BIOS flash on the card or the motherboard? I just updated the motherboard BIOS and it still recognizes it as 2.5. I wonder if I should try older versions of the motherboard's BIOS?

I will try and use Driver Sweeper when I get home.

Are the graphics card drivers even initialized by the time I get to BIOS screen? Should that affect the link speed recognized before Windows even starts to boot?

 

[jaquith]

BIOS = MOBO. Good point - No the drivers are not recognized booting into the BIOS. I know ATI has a habit of being intrusive in the nVidia - so that's what was stuck in my head.

This might seem silly, but clean the GTX contacts with Isopropyl alcohol -- maybe a bad contact is having the BIOS read it as a PCIe 1.x.

Q - What MOBO? I'll do a little research.
Q - Any other PCIe cards on your rig?

Your GTX 580 SC should have these benchmarks clock per clock -> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/evga_geforce_gtx_580_sc_review

 

[mortonww]

Okay, just got home. I'm gonna run 3D Mark 11, Heaven, and a couple of game benchmarks to see where I stand.

The motherboard is Intel DX58SO. I used their customer service chat and the guy couldn't give me an answer. And I'm having trouble finding people with the same problem

 

[jaquith]

Q - Any other PCIe cards on your rig?

 

[mortonww]

Oh, sorry. The gtx 580 is the only pcie card in the system. I have a hauppauge tv tuner in a pcie slot, but that's always been there. My vantage score was P6223, which seems normal from what I'm reading on forums. I ran Uniengine and got a good score but it ran really choppy. But now I'm away from my pc again. Thanks for sticking with me. I ran Driver Sweeper and it found a bunch of ATI crappy on there, so maybe I'll try again.

 

[mortonww]

Tv tuner is in PCI slot.

 

[jaquith]

Try pulling the TV PCIe Card and see what you get...then just stick 'er back in.

 

[mortonww]

Best answer selected by mortonww.

 

[mortonww]

New motherboard solved it. This had happened with two cards and I figured the odds of me getting two brand new gtx 580 sc that were defective right in a row was pretty low. So I decided to get an Asus Sabertooth and see if that solved it. It did.