Question NVIDIA Corporation. VGA-compatible controller, Running at x8: What does this mean?

[Crow15]

I was building a PC whilst checking the bios to make sure everything was compatible. One of them stood out to me. Looking into to the motherboard explorer, the GPU slot said "PCIe x16 slot (PCI-E1, Gen 3): NVIDIA Corporation. VGA-compatible controller, Running at x8"

At first, I didn't think of it much. Since I do not currently have internet for the PC right now, I launched a single player game and found out the GPU was not being used and I was getting like 1 to 2 frames a second.
I was happy that the bios picked something up, but unless I was gonna keep it this way, I am not able to use it for any type of game except for swf games...

. Could it be I might have touched something in the Bio? Do I need to change something?
. Do I need the NVIDIA drivers?
. I bought a Windows 10 key on Ebay that cost like 10$? Can that be the problem?
Honestly I do not know.

System Specification
.MSI B350M Mortar Arctic mATX Motherboard.
.EVGA NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB Graphics Card (used on ebay but clean)
.No installed PC Fans
.Cooler Master MWE 500W 80PLUS

Feel free to ask more questions if needed.


Thank you

 

[Obakasama]

Sounds like you haven't installed drivers for the graphics card. Doing so would help the situation somewhat. You can check by entering Device Manager and seeing what is under Display adapters. If it does not name the GTX 1060 and has Microsoft basic display (or similarly worded), then you'd need to install the drivers for the GTX 1060.

 

[mortemas]

You didn’t mention the cpu. Maybe you’re running on the integrated graphics instead of the gtx 1060. That would be a setting in BIOS, plus what Obak said about installing drivers. The x8 is the mode that the pcie slot is currently running in. Under load the gpu should switch to x16 mode for higher data throughput.