PCI-E v2 16x but running at 1x

[XaiGRS]

im having fps drops in games and found this in hwinfo, what does this mean and what can i do?

[JoostinOnline]

You're running a GTX 660, that card is old enough that it's not going to need much bandwidth anyway.  However, I doubt it's staying in 1x mode when you're in a game.  That's just a power saving method when you're on the desktop.  Try checking HWInfo while in game.

[Chiyawa]

First thing:

 

- What game are you playing?

- Which slot is your graphic card located? The bottom PCIe slot or the top PCIe slot of your motherboard?

- Have you update your GPU driver and motherboard chipset driver?

 

Since you mentioned that your graphic card is from an Alienware machine, I'm afraid that there might be compatibility issues if you plug it to normal desktop. Maybe you can get GPU-Z and run PCI-Express render test to see if the PCIe automatically switch to PCIe 3.0 x16 or PCIe 2.0 x16.

[XaiGRS]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

You're running a GTX 660, that card is old enough that it's not going to need much bandwidth anyway.  However, I doubt it's staying in 1x mode when you're in a game.  That's just a power saving method when you're on the desktop.  Try checking HWInfo while in game.

nope that is infact the gpu running on 1x. just reseated it and cleaned the slot and walaa hwinfo says its x 16 now. no more frame drops/

43 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

First thing:

 

- What game are you playing?

- Which slot is your graphic card located? The bottom PCIe slot or the top PCIe slot of your motherboard?

- Have you update your GPU driver and motherboard chipset driver?

 

Since you mentioned that your graphic card is from an Alienware machine, I'm afraid that there might be compatibility issues if you plug it to normal desktop. Maybe you can get GPU-Z and run PCI-Express render test to see if the PCIe automatically switch to PCIe 3.0 x16 or PCIe 2.0 x16.

csgo and r6s
top slot
latest game ready driver

[XaiGRS]

41 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

First thing:

 

- What game are you playing?

- Which slot is your graphic card located? The bottom PCIe slot or the top PCIe slot of your motherboard?

- Have you update your GPU driver and motherboard chipset driver?

 

Since you mentioned that your graphic card is from an Alienware machine, I'm afraid that there might be compatibility issues if you plug it to normal desktop. Maybe you can get GPU-Z and run PCI-Express render test to see if the PCIe automatically switch to PCIe 3.0 x16 or PCIe 2.0 x16.

unrelated but im not aware that there are compatibility issues for oem cards. do you have any examples?

[Chiyawa]

On 5/10/2020 at 10:18 AM, LiquidKaffe said:

unrelated but im not aware that there are compatibility issues for oem cards. do you have any examples?

Well, I remember that some OEM card may have issue as it would not want to boot if its plug in to other system. Very rare case.