HD 7970 windforce oc edition running in PCI-E 8X mode with GA-H55M-USB3 (solved)

[vgaggia]

Hello i've had my HD 7970 for about a year now (not new of course) and it has always been running in 8x mode i used to have a Gigabyte GT430 before i upgraded and it ran in 16X. YES i have it in the top PCI-E lane and i'm quite sure i've made sure to see if it isnt power savings, would love some help.

Thank you all.

Kind regards to all who help.

 

[Caring1]

I would guess the card is limited by the PCI-e lanes available from the CPU.
Although the card is capable of PCI-e 3.0, the CPU only uses PCI-e 2.0, so you are seeing that at full speed showing as 8x 3.0.

 

[vgaggia]

So just cpu bottlenecking? would overclocking my cpu help at all?
My pc runs gta 5 at around 45fps and cpu usage varies from 99 to 75% and gpu is 50 to 98% but i'd assume that means nothing.
EDIT: i forgot to mention it's on the highest settings at 1080p but not advanced settings is this fps around right for a 7970
EDIT2:OK Solved i guess gonna just have to buy a new mobo and cpu some day

 

[Caring1]

You would need a newer motherboard and CPU to see PCI-e 3.0 x16 from that card.
Overclocking will only see a minimal frame rate increase, with power consumption rising exponentially.

 

[jboydgolfer]

You're not losing any performance to that card running in 8X mode

I had the exact same problem with a 7970 in my old 1155 motherboard it wouldn't even work in the top PCI slot, so I dropped it to the lower slot and it would work but only in 8x mode , It doesn't make a difference though because you're not losing any performance as the video card can't even saturate that bandwidth

Even much newer cards don't saturate 8X. There were several tests done to prove this one of which is hosted here on tech power up with much more capable hardware than what you were I have/had. iirc a gtx1080 was used