Legit Reviews

Alright system specs are

E6300 @ 2.9GHz
2x1gb G.Skill ddr2-800
Gigabyte GA-965-ds3
eVGA 7900GTX

For some reason, my pci-e 7900GTX shows in cpu-z that its link width is x1 of a possible x16. it wouldn't bother me except that my performance has taken a huge hit. I have tried nvidia control panel to fix the problem, i've tried "locking" the pci-e speed at 100MHz and 101MHz and I've tried it set on auto. I am going to take it back down to 2.8GHz (Last speed that benchmarked normally)

For those of you that think it might be a cpu issue, don't think that, i'm testing that right now and will post if it fixes it. My machine is superPi stable at 32M x2instances and it goes pretty fast (18m 23s). This is a graphics problem as i'm averaging about 22FPS in 3dmark05 where as i used to average about 35. No overclocking has been done on the card either.

HELP!

Sounds like a bios issue to me, make sure your mobo the PCI-E is locked to 100, PCI is locked to 33, and that somewhere in your bios you have it set to x16 and not 1x

I've tried locking PCI-E to 100, 101, and have set to auto. None of these things have worked. I will look for that PCI setting because I didn't see it anywhere in my BIOS. Also, I don't think there is place for me to specify x16 like there was in my old board.

odd problem indeed. you should try to contact gigabyte and see if there's a problem (I am not aware of such issue with the card). Did you make sure that you choose pcie as primary video adapter?

Yeah I checked that, the only other option was PEG, i'm not even sure what that one stands for. I have emailed Gigabyte and am waiting their response

Its a a motherboard compatibility problem , update to the board with the latest bios .

Did you ever find a solution to this? I am running an almost identical (e6300, ds3, gskill ram, 7900gt) setup and I am seeing the same problem. I have the latest (f10) BIOS.

edit: setting the PCI speed to 101 in the bios appears to fix this.