Optiplex 360 - Graphics Card working at PCI-e 1x only

Question

Hi: I've been rebuilding a reclaimed Optiplex 360 MT into a light gaming box. Upgraded it to Windows 8.1. Updated bios to A07 and all chipset drivers to latest. Upgraded the CPU to an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500. Everything is fine to this point. Wanted to upgrade the video card from the old Radeon 3450. Purchased an MSI Geforce GT720 because it demands little power in order to fit the constraints of the stock power supply.

Card installed fine and runs OK, except for one important detail. The PCIe link is running at 1x, rather than 8x (this card runs 8x max rather than 16x, I believe due to its low power consumption). I confirmed this in both CPU-X and GPU-X.

Have tried a number of things:

- replaced the old card to confirm it was running at PCIe 16x. It does.

- removed the Gforce drivers to seeif that made a difference (it didn't, still 1x).

- reinstalled all the Gforce drivers and updated to latest

- reran the Bios update to A07 (Bios on startup show it is running A07)

- read through all the old posts I could find here and on Toms Hardware looking for a solution - didn't see anything beyond what I have tried.

Only thing left that I can think of is to drop the video card into another Optilex 360 to see if it runs at 1x on that machine also to rule out an issue with the PCIe slot itself.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Will this card just not run at more than 1x in a PCIe 1.1 slot?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Aside from this, it isn't a bad little machine (considering the minimal cost to update it).

speedstep · Accepted Answer

I would suggest downloading and installing the Battlenet Client and trying World of warcraft and StarcraftII and Diablo3 etc.

I also recommend installing Directx June 2010 and re enabling Dotnet 2.0 thru 3.5 in control panel, programs and features, add windows components.

The doing the 27,947 windows updates that have to be done during 10 reboots until it says there are no more updates.

It could very well be that unless you get an X16 card the bios assumes that all other cards are X1.

Islandtime252 · Accepted Answer

Hi Speedstep:

I tried everything suggested, but still no dice. I'm afraid your last comment is correct - this motherboard supports either 16x or 1x, everything that isn't 16 defaults to 1x.

I returned the Gforce GT 720 card and picked up a true pci-e 16x card, the GT 740. Dropped it in, loaded the drivers and everything works great using the full 16x pci-e link.

Thanks for the help.

speedstep · Answer

'The PCIe link is running at 1x, rather than 8x '   based on what? How is this shown?  Dell does not support CPU-Z or GPU-Z programs. These programs Frequently get 'speed' values wrong.

Islandtime252 · Answer

Thanks for responding. I was not aware that CPU-Z and GPU-Z were not reliable on Dells. I've seen plenty of mention of these programs being used on the various forums so was assuming they were OK.

Can you suggest anther tool or method I can use to validate the actual PCIe link value in use?

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Optiplex 360 - Graphics Card working at PCI-e 1x only

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