NVidia GTX 260 not using all 16 lanes

Indian · April 21st, 2009, 07:03 PM

Suddenly encountered a sys freeze during game play.
Found out that one of my 2 GTX 260 cards runs using only 8 lanes instead of 16.
Communicating this to hardware vendors is difficult. They refuse to understand, let alone tell me if the card is faulty. The system ran fine for about 4 months.

Specs:
i7-965
GA-X58-Extreme (2x PCI-E 16 lane slots and 1x PCI-E 8 lane slot)
2x XFX GTX260 Black ed. in SLI. (card in the two 16 lane slots with SLI bridge).
Driver WHQL 182.50

What I found was when swapping the cards in their slots the "problem" moves with the card, IMHO ruling out that it is a mobo problem.

My question. Has anybody heard/experienced a card having a 16 lane interface running on only 8 of its lanes?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

squall_leonhart · April 23rd, 2009, 05:36 AM

Check the connectors on the affected video card,

i think though that you've lost communication with half of the pins.

Indian · April 23rd, 2009, 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by squall_leonhart

Check the connectors on the affected video card,

i think though that you've lost communication with half of the pins.

Yes, but what is causing that? Remember that if I put it in either one of the PCI-E 16x slots it only uses 8x lanes while doing the same routine with the other card it always uses 16x lanes. This proves nothing wrong with the mobo, bios or drivers in my opnion.
Agree?

squall_leonhart · April 23rd, 2009, 12:53 PM

RMA the card you might have blown a transistor or capacitor.

**Regeneration** · April 23rd, 2009, 01:44 PM

I had the same bug with X38 and Crossfire. In my case, it was a weird motherboard bug. Anyways, remove the non-problemic card and check if the problemic card runs at PCIe x16 alone. If it does work in PCIe x8, than something is wrong with the card, if it doesn't... so its the motherboard.

Indian · April 23rd, 2009, 03:57 PM

I will RMA the card.

**Regeneration** · April 23rd, 2009, 04:08 PM

Have you verified it? ran the card solo?

squall_leonhart · April 23rd, 2009, 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regeneration

I had the same bug with X38 and Crossfire. In my case, it was a weird motherboard bug. Anyways, remove the non-problemic card and check if the problemic card runs at PCIe x16 alone. If it does work in PCIe x8, than something is wrong with the card, if it doesn't... so its the motherboard.

I'm sure that if it was the mainboard, the same slot would be 8x no matter which card is in it.

Since the 8x follows that specific video card its gotta be the card itself

Indian · April 24th, 2009, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regeneration

Have you verified it? ran the card solo?

Yes I ran both cards solo. It is the card since it runs always in 8x on either one of the the 2 PCI-E 16 x slots while the other one runs at 16x.