I have a tendency to ramble, so I'll try and be succinct (yes, I understand stating this is ironic).
It appears that my PCIe x16 slot on my motherboard is not doing anything, but I don't know why.
For reference, I have a single GPU system configuration, and the GPU and MOBO are as follows:
MOBO: Gigabyte H87M-D3H (
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4492#ov)
GPU: GTX 770 (GV-N770OC-2GD -
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4629#ov)
According to the specifications for the motherboard, it features the following expansion slots:
1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16), conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.
2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4), conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.
It also states "For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot", which is essentially the impetus of my query.
For approximately the last two years, the GPU has always been plugged into the PCIEX4 slot on the motherboard. Why? Because that's where it was plugged into. There is no further reasoning behind it.
Recently, I wanted to move it to the PCIEX16 slot. Why? Well, aside from the statement concerning optimum performance, I thought it also a worthwhile thing to try in my quest to prevent the "Nvidia kernel mode driver stopped responding" error from occurring, although I've lost all hope on the latter point. For the sake of this post, we can assume the primary reason for me wanting to move it to the PCIEX16 slot is due to the fact that "I want to".
In any case, upon reading the documentation for the motherboard (yes, I read instruction manuals before I fiddle with things), I noted that I needed to make an adjustment in the BIOS as to which PCIe slot is designated as the primary slot. As I only have one GPU, I assume this means that I should alter this to whichever PCIe slot the GPU is residing in. According to the documentation, the PCIEX16 slot is designated as "PCIe 1 Slot" in the BIOS, whereas the PCIEX4 slot is designated as "PCIe 2 Slot" in the BIOS.
So, I first went into the BIOS to make the appropriate alteration, but I noticed an oddity here. Although my GPU was plugged into the PCIEX4 slot, the BIOS stated that it was using "PCIe 1 Slot" as the primary, which corresponds to the PCIEX16 slot according to the documentation. It seems to me like the BIOS should've been configured for "PCIe 2 Slot", according to what the documentation had listed.
As such, I decided to see what would happen if I simply swapped the GPU to the PCIEX16 slot. However, upon doing this, I was not able to achieve any output to my display upon rebooting. Thinking that perhaps the documentation was in error, I put the GPU back in the PCIEX4 slot and went back to the BIOS. This time, I switched the primary slot to "PCIe 2 Slot". Afterwards, I again swapped the GPU into the PCIEX16 slot and started the system up again.
However, even in this case, I was still not able to get any output signal. However, I was able to achieve the output signal again after I put the GPU back in the PCIEX4 slot.
As such, it seems to me that the PCIEX16 slot on the motherboard is either not doing anything, or is somehow disabled. Additionally, altering the primary PCIe slot in the BIOS from "PCIe Slot 1" to "PCIe Slot 2" seems to have absolutely no effect on anything. I can only ever receive an output signal to the display if the GPU is plugged into the PCIEX4 slot, which is designated as "PCIe 2 Slot" in the BIOS. At the very least, I would've expected that swapping the BIOS configuration would've caused the output signal to the display to cease on one of the settings, but it seems to work for both of them. And yes, I'm making sure that I save the changes in the BIOS after I alter them.
I browsed the documentation for additional details, but couldn't find any.
I noted that the PCIEX16 slot conforms to the PCIe 3.0 standard whereas the PCIEX4 slot conforms to the PCIe 2.0 standard, but the GPU possesses a PCIe 3.0 bus, so I don't see why this would be a factor.
Thus, I was wondering if there was some additional setting in the BIOS that needed changing, or if there is some additional physical configuration necessary on my motherboard. The way it is now, it's like it has a dead PCIe slot on there.
