2.0 PCI-E Graphic card question..

[Teddy181]

I have a new five month old budget set-up rig with integrated graphics on Asus P5KPL-AM EPU motherboard with a 2.80Ghz Pentium Dual Core E5500 Wolfdale processor. I want to install a midrange graphic card - A 512mb Nvidia Geforce 9600GT which is 2.0 version. My mobo only supports graphic cards in 1.0 version PCIE x 16 slot. Although it is backward compatible with 1.0 but it runs only at 8X. It's like having an 8X AGP card. Is there any way (by using BIOS tweaks perhaps?) we can reconfigure it to run at 16X? I'm not interested in overclocking, I just want to have a decent performing rig at stock setting. Thanks for any answer.

[Tetrium]

If it's PCI-E then it should work at 16x anyway. Strange

[max3]

i have not read your mobo manual but in older motherboards , if there is 2 pcie 16x slots; in bios, should be an option if you are using both slots than they will work 8x, so option will switch second slot to 1x and first one will be working with 16x.This may not be the case but i have seen many boards with options like that.
this is first thing in my mind. there might be other solutions as well.

[Cobracon]

How do you know the card is running at x 8 instead of x 16?

[max3]

Dont want to run ahead of a train but,
GPU driver would tell that, diag soft like: Everest,gpu-z,astra, etc would tell that as well, you might also notice it if you play any intensive gfx game.

[FDIV]

A 9600gt is unlikely to saturate the bandwith even at only 8x so I wouldn't sweat it even if you can't get the slot to run at 16x.

About that, early boards often had a switchable card thingy between the two slots that would allow you to do one slot at 16x or two at 8x. Look for it. Later boards automatically switched from one slot at 16x to two at 8x if anything was inserted into the second slot often even if the inserted card was a 1x. Do you have a card in the second 16x slot.

Either way I think your fine running a 9600gt with only an 8x slot. That being said, a 9600gt is not a mid range card. It was a mid range card years ago, when it was released. A mid range card today is a gtx460. a 9600gt will probably get you 1/4th the frame rates of a gtx 460. Most games will be playable at medium settings provided your monitor is 1680x1050 or less.

[Marcin]

Problem is your motherboard. ASUS P5K series had that issue about working with slower PCI-E slot like x8 or even x1.

I have had same problem with Gigabyte based on Intel P31 chipset. Geforce 8800GTS worked only in x1 standard when should in x16. Updating BIOS in VGA and motherboard doesn't help. When I used 7900GT rating was normal x16. Geforce 8800GTS on other board also worked in x16. So final conclusion is that some boards on Intel chipsets especially P31 and P35 have problem in compatibility with "latest" VGA cards especially nVidia 8xxx and 9xxx series.

You can try some tips from this article http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=522

but they do not helped me.