I'm pretty new to building PCs, so I hope someone can help me out. I have a Gigabyte 1080 GPU on an X570 Elite motherboard. The GPU works fine when I'm just browsing, but when I try to use the higher-end PCIe slot and run Furmark or play games, it starts acting up and stops working. To make things run smoother, I switched it to a lower PCIe slot, but the performance for gaming is noticeably worse. Oddly enough, my friend's Gigabyte 3070 works perfectly in that same top PCIe slot for a full week without issues. I'm unsure what the problem might be or if there's a fix for it since the GPU market is tough right now. Any advice?
2 Answers
Are you referring to the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite? If that's the case, the second PCIe slot only runs at 4x speed, which would definitely bottleneck your 1080. When you say it's 'wonky,' could you explain more? Have you tried a DDU to uninstall your display drivers and then reinstalling them? If all else fails, your GPU might be failing, especially since it worked fine in your friend's PC for a while.
Since your 3070 works in the top slot, it seems like the issue may lie with the 1080 itself. The lower slot is likely bottlenecking your 1080, so you could try underclocking it a bit—like reducing its memory by 200 MHz and the core by 20 MHz. I had a similar problem with my older 1080 Ti; I had to underclock it to avoid artifacts in certain games. Good luck!
I’ll definitely give that a shot. It’s funny because my friend (who has the 3070) really messed with my settings when we were drinking, and when he underclocked it a bunch, it actually worked fine.
By the way, how's your transition from Nvidia to AMD been? I’m also considering switching to AMD but the market’s wild right now. I'm just waiting for a decent refurbished 3070 deal on Newegg for around $320.
Yep, it's the Aorus Elite model! I get that the second slot can bottleneck performance. By 'wonky,' I meant that when I put my 1080 in that stronger top PCIe slot, I see a lot of artifacts and then my PC shuts down. I've already done a DDU and reinstalled the drivers, but it didn’t help. It’s the weirdest thing because it worked like a charm in my friend's PC for about 15 hours of use, including some gaming.