P5B Deluxe: PCI-E Link Width set to x1 intermittently

[dwell]

I noticed that my framerates were getting cut in half when the system is up a while, or when I do a warm boot. I spent some time investigating and noticed the delta between occurrences in CPU-Z is the "PCI-E Link Width" is normally set to x16, but when the system is running slow it gets bumped down to x1.

I have no idea what's causing this. I have E6400 at 3.2Ghz (8x400) and the PCI bus set to 100Mhz. Memory timings, etc in the sig.

Anyone have any idea?

 

[dwell]

It looks like it's a pretty common problem with the P5B and overclocking. Setting the PCI-E frequency to 110Mhz seems to have fixed it, but I can't help but feel that it's a hack.

Anyone have any experience with this issue?

 

[dwell]

Just to answer my question so the next poor sod who runs across this problem finds it. There's no one solution for everyone. Things to try:

1) Set PCI Express Frequency to AUTO
2) Set the NB and SB voltages manually (take them off AUTO)
3) If 1 & 2 fails, bump the PCI Express Frequency to 101, 105, or 110Mhz (not recommended)
4) If all fails, flash back to the 614 BIOS

A combination of 1 & 2 worked for me.

 

[Shimmishim]

this has been a problem known with this board for a while... and you are absolutely right that there is not a universal fix for everyone...

it seems that a combination changing voltages seem to work for people...

even i have had this 1x problem but haven't seen it now for a while...

 

[Joepublic2]

My gigabyte P965-S3 does this same thing at 400Mhz, too. I just upped the northbridge voltage by .1V and it stabilized it. It's simply the fact that when you increase an ICs clock frequency you sometimes need to increase the voltage to prevent data errors, just like CPUs.

 

[n7]

This is a seemingly random issue.

While some ppl can't make it go away, i can't make it happen.

I'm just glad my system likes working properly...

 

[beefjerky911]

I have this problem, the only way that I can get it to run at 16x is when I first reboot, I let it go thru the memory scan and give it a CTRL+ALT+Del to reboot, after the reboot it always will run at 16x, if I do not reboot it will always run at 1x from a cold boot.

 

[3NF]

It's a funny issue. For me, it went away when I manually set the NB voltage. Leaving it at auto and overclocking doesn't work for me