Reported PCI3 bandwidth reduction after upgrading to Win10

[TGTF]

Hello people,

I upgraded last night one of my older desktop PCs from Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 10 Pro (2020 H2) and noticed that the GPUZ reported bandwidth has dropped to x8.
Nothing on the HW side has changed & prior to the upgrade no such issue.

I happened to have an old GPUZ screenshot of the card for your reference.

I already tried, unsuccessfully:
- stressing the card by playing games,
- using DDU to completely remove the driver in Safe mode and reinstall clearing all gfx settings in the proccess,
- verified that my PC is on "High" power plan in the Power options.

My setup:
i7 4770 @ 3.8GHz, 24GB DDR3, GTX 1070 with 460.89 driver, OS & Games drives on M2 SSDs, Corsair 750W PSU, 24" LG 1080p monitor @144Hz.
Power management mode is set to "Prefer Max Performance" in the nVIDIA control panel, and the Link State Power Management setting in the OS is turned off (under advanced "Power Options").

Now, I know that halving the bandwidth at 1080p should not be even noticeable, I am just really curious why this is happening.

Thank in advance for any answers and I wish you all a Happy New Year !!!!

 

[INSTG8R]

All I can suggest is reinstall the latest Intel Chipset drivers.

 

[TGTF]

All I can suggest is reinstall the latest Intel Chipset drivers.

thanks for the suggestion. I gave it a shot and it didn't work, but that made me check the Device Manager and I noticed something:
since this is a 5y old PC (w/ a Z87 chipset), I didn't use the manufacturer drivers since they would be extremely old, but Iobit Driver Booster which is a free driver update utility.
However, I did notice that Windows Update did an install for some drivers after the first reboots but I didn't catch what they were and WU is known to mess up driver updates.

For some reason, in Device Manager I see drivers installed for a server grade chipset (C220) and a Xeon processor, but clearly my CPU is identified properly.
I will try deleting the chipset driver all together and have a fresh one manually installed and report back.

 

[INSTG8R]

thanks for the suggestion. I gave it a shot and it didn't work, but that made me check the Device Manager and I noticed something:
since this is a 5y old PC (w/ a Z87 chipset), I didn't use the manufacturer drivers since they would be extremely old, but Iobit Driver Booster which is a free driver update utility.
However, I did notice that Windows Update did an install for some drivers after the first reboots but I didn't catch what they were and WU is known to mess up driver updates.

For some reason, in Device Manager I see drivers installed for a server grade chipset (C220) and a Xeon processor, but clearly my CPU is identified properly.
I will try deleting the chipset driver all together and have a fresh one manually installed and report back.

Yeah definitely a good case to grab whatever’s available on the Intel site and see if it changes anything.

 

[TGTF]

@INSTG8R It didn't unfortunately, and I have disabled WU driver auto update, just in case.
Took a look at my BIOS settings and anything related to GFX card and power savings were already off.

anyway.... thanks again for your input !!

 

[W1zzard]

GPU-Z 1.9.0 is REALLY old. Maybe it didn't read the bus interface correctly back then and your card has always been running at x8 ?

Just to double check, you didn't remove the card or CPU or similar at any point? (even if you reinstalled it in the same config)

Which motherboard?

 

[Caring1]

Don't use crap like driver booster.
Go to the manufacturer site and download the correct drivers yourself.
Also I notice the Bios version has changed on the GPU, have you flashed it?

 

[TGTF]

GPU-Z 1.9.0 is REALLY old. Maybe it didn't read the bus interface correctly back then and your card has always been running at x8 ?

Just to double check, you didn't remove the card or CPU or similar at any point? (even if you reinstalled it in the same config)

Which motherboard?

Hi W1zzard, I always take a screenshot when I buy a new gfx card. That was the current GPUz version back then.
My card is running on x16 on Windows 8.1.... I restored an image backup of my boot drive from 2days ago and everything's is fine (as a sanity check) !!
I routinely have GPUz running when I game to monitor the sensors... I would have noticed the bandwidth drop (as I immediately noticed it the 1st time I ran it on the new OS).

As I said, no HW was touched. This was an in place upgrade of OS and re-installation of drivers, nothing else.
My mobo is an ASROCK Z87 Extreme6

Don't use crap like driver booster.
Go to the manufacturer site and download the correct drivers yourself.
Also I notice the Bios version has changed on the GPU, have you flashed it?

The are no "correct" drivers on a manufacturers website after 5years; most of them are included in the OS (because they are really old).
Been using driver booster (which uses digitally signed drivers) on dozens of machines; never had an issue other than perhaps not finding a driver for some obscure piece of HW.
Regarding the BIOS version, I did notice that too. I must have updated the cards BIOS years ago, when the card was relatively new (bought in 2016), but I don't really remember that. I never had any issues with this card and I don't OC, since I hate BSODs.

On the rare case I do get one (caused by SW f@ckups) 2-3 times/year, I use the OS memory dump and Windows debugger to analyze it, and it has never been HW related.
This machine is primarily used for Vmware Workstation VMs (concurently running 5-10 VMs M-F 9-5 these days), with some light gaming (SC2) and youtube/netflix on the side.

 

[W1zzard]

My card is running on x16 on Windows 8.1.... I restored an image backup of my boot drive from 2days ago and everything's is fine (as a sanity check) !!

Good, that rules out hardware issue and gpuz issue. Do you have a spare drive that you can do a fresh install on for Testing? Remove other drives during that to be sure you can’t Lose data by accident

 

[TGTF]

Good, that rules out hardware issue and gpuz issue. Do you have a spare drive that you can do a fresh install on for Testing? Remove other drives during that to be sure you can’t Lose data by accident

Yes, I do, and that is going to be my next step..... but I thought it would be cool to try an OS upgrade to see if everything would work.
And apart from the PCIE thing, everything else is OK.

 

[Hugis]

My Z97 has Xeon stuff in device manager, but no C220 stuff if that helps.


Edit: How have you got NVME in that board? Could that be the problem?

 

[Caring1]

For some reason, in Device Manager I see drivers installed for a server grade chipset (C220) and a Xeon processor, but clearly my CPU is identified properly.
I will try deleting the chipset driver all together and have a fresh one manually installed and report back.

If you had checked the manufacturers site you would see, that Motherboard supports Xeon Processors also.
Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® / Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium® / Celeron® Processors (Socket 1150)

The are no "correct" drivers on a manufacturers website after 5years; most of them are included in the OS (because they are really old).

ASRock > Z87 Extreme6

A-Style : Home Cloud, Purity Sound™, HDMI-In; Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel Xeon / Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium / Celeron Processors (Socket 1150); Premium Gold Capacitor Design, Digi Power, 12 Power Phase Design, Dual-Stack MOSFET; Supports Dual Channel DDR3/DDR3L 2933+(OC); 3 PCIe...

www.asrock.com

Oh look, all the necessary drivers.

 

[TGTF]

My Z97 has Xeon stuff in device manager, but no C220 stuff if that helps.


Edit: How have you got NVME in that board? Could that be the problem?

View attachment 181869

I have 2xM2 NVMEs using M2 to PCIE adapters. The M2s are there for years and they are my boot / VM drives. ASROCK supported them by adding a beta BIOS back in 2017.

 

[Hugis]

So they are plugged into your pcie x16 slots and you have 3 slots, wont that slow the graphics down to 8x ? ie. 1 x16 or 2 x 8 etc

::-Edit see below


This is your problem i think.

 

[TGTF]

If you had checked the manufacturers site you would see, that Motherboard supports Xeon Processors also.
Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® / Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium® / Celeron® Processors (Socket 1150)

ASRock > Z87 Extreme6

A-Style : Home Cloud, Purity Sound™, HDMI-In; Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel Xeon / Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium / Celeron Processors (Socket 1150); Premium Gold Capacitor Design, Digi Power, 12 Power Phase Design, Dual-Stack MOSFET; Supports Dual Channel DDR3/DDR3L 2933+(OC); 3 PCIe...

www.asrock.com

Oh look, all the necessary drivers.

Never knew that my board supported Xeon CPUs..... thanks for that !

as far as the drivers go.... like I said.... they are from 2015... even the OS is carrying newer than those.

So there plugged into your pcie x16 slot and you have 2 slots, wont that slow it down to 8x ? ie. 1 x16 or 2 x 8

well that wasn't the case before the OS upgrade, but Win10 supports NVME natively.... my mobo has 4xPCIe slots (1 slot 1x and 3 slots 16x | physical).
If it detects them and shifts more bandwidth to the PCIE 3/4 slots where the M2s are plugged in, I don't know.. but that should be easy to test, by unplugging one of them.

thanks for the suggestion/hint

 

[Hugis]

Never knew that my board supported Xeon CPUs..... thanks for that !

as far as the drivers go.... like I said.... they are from 2015... even the OS is carrying newer than those.



well that wasn't the case before the OS upgrade, but Win10 supports NVME natively.... my mobo has 4xPCIe slots (1 slot 1x and 3 slots 16x | physical).
If it detects them and shifts more bandwidth to the PCIE 3/4 slots where the M2s are plugged in, I don't know.. but that should be easy to test, by unplugging one of them.

thanks for the suggestion/hint

Your going to have to remove both your M2's to see 16 x speed on your graphics card btw. If you just remove one M2 , you will have 1 x M2 @ 8x and the 1070 @ 8x (that's how bifurcation works)
My guess is your previous version of windows wasnt giving you the real numbers or your M2's weren't installed when you took that screenshot of your 1070 @ 16x.

 

[TGTF]

@Hugis: I am not sure exactly when I installed the M2s, but I am almost positive that the 1070 screenshot is before that.
Can't remove both M2s since one is the boot device.

In any case, I am pretty sure that that is the reason I am getting reduced bandwidth and it makes total sense.

In mobos with M2, at worst you are loosing SATA ports if you populate all M2 slots (depending on CPU lanes & chipset combination).



I want to thank you all for your help in troubleshooting this with me. Cheers !!