Question RTX 4080 FE Running at PCIE 1.1 - Clock stuck at 825mhz - Very poor performance

[bdub17]

System:
MB: Gigabyte Z390 UD 1.1
CPU: 9700K
GPU: RTX 4080FE
RAM: 2X16 DDR4 3200mhz
PSU: Corsair RM850x

Before this I was running an RTX 3080 Aorus Xtreme with some crashing issues, but overall it worked Today I installed the 4080 FE and immediately ran into issues,

The clock speed seems to be stuck at 825mhz when using HWMonitor. When looking at GPU-Z the clock and memory metrics are blank and the Bus Interface is showing I'm running PCIE 1.1, even after doing the load test. When I try to play games, I get extremely poor performance, between 10-25fps on normal settings.

I've done many DDU runs and installed at least 5 different Nvidia driver versions to no avail. I've also played with the BIOS settings a good bit. I've set the PEG link to Gen 3 to force it to use that. The card is plugged into the 1 16X 3.0 PCIE slot. When I switch back to the 3080, it seems to work fine. I'm stumped now.

Maybe it's a MB issue? I'm hesitant to spend money on another motherboard with out any kind of strong hunch, plus the 9th gen chipset motherboards bios aren't being updated anymore. I wonder if maybe the card isn't seating properly, but it seems to click into place, albeit a little wobbly in the slot.

If anyone has an ideas of things to try or potential issues, I would be very appreciative as this card is a crazy price and it's very frustrating that I can't get it to work. I've had some issues with the other card using this MB but not to this level. Thank you.

 

[thestryker]

Typically if you're plugged directly into the motherboard (not using a riser cable) and another card is working fine it's your card or perhaps a bad power adapter (I'm assuming you're using the 8 pin to 12 pin adapter).

 

[bdub17]

Hi, yes it is plugged directly into to the motherboard. I wondered about the power adapter. I’ll try replacing that and see what happens.

 

[bdub17]

I wonder if it’s possible that the fact that the PSU has 2 cables with forked multiple connectors is an issue. Because I have to use one cable for 2 connections to the adapter.

 

[thestryker]

Your 3080 has 3x 8 pin connectors doesn't it?

 

[bdub17]

Yes exactly.

 

[thestryker]

Then the PSU cabling isn't the problem because the 4080 and 3080 have the same TDP and you're using the same number of connections from the PSU.

 

[bdub17]

Thanks for the responses.

It didn't make it into the screenshots but HWMonitor shows a power draw reading of around 25watts and it doesn't change under load. I don't know if that's just a bad reading or if that's what how much power it's actually drawing, but it does seem like power is the issue. Would a problem with the PCIE sot or a bad seating potentially cause these issues?

I have this huge Noctua cooler on the CPU that puts a lot of weight on the Motherboard. It seems like that might be affecting how well the GPU seats into the slot.

I ordered a replacement power adapter. I'll see if that helps.

 

[Zerk2012]

Thanks for the responses.

It didn't make it into the screenshots but HWMonitor shows a power draw reading of around 25watts and it doesn't change under load. I don't know if that's just a bad reading or if that's what how much power it's actually drawing, but it does seem like power is the issue. Would a problem with the PCIE sot or a bad seating potentially cause these issues?

I have this huge Noctua cooler on the CPU that puts a lot of weight on the Motherboard. It seems like that might be affecting how well the GPU seats into the slot.

I ordered a replacement power adapter. I'll see if that helps.

When you click the blue ? In GPU-Z does it stay at 1.1 when it runs the short test?

The power adapter should be fine if your using the one that came with the card.

Are they another PC you can try the card in.

 

[bdub17]

Yes it stays at 1.1 while running that test. Unfortunately, I don't have another PC handy to test it in. I might have to try checking with some friends.

 

[Eximo]

Unless you take a multimeter to the adapter, you really can't know if there is a broken wire. You could visually inspect the pins to see if they are all properly seated in the connector.

You mentioned BIOS settings, have you tried updating the BIOS entirely?

 

[bdub17]

I swapped the adapter out and it didn't fix anything. So that wasn't it. I'm running version "F10" of my BIOS which appears to be latest version. I updated that a few years ago in response to issues I was having with the 3080.

I'm trying a re-install of windows now, then I'll swap out the PSU. If those don't work then it seems it would have to be either an issue with the motherboard or the card itself.

One thing I noticed was that every time I ran DDU, after the reboot Windows would automatically install some random driver from January 2023 for the 4080. I tried the various methods to stop Windows from doing that(system setting and registry update) but I couldn't get it to stop. So maybe there's some kind of issue with my Windows install.

 

[bdub17]

I was able to solve the issue. It was the motherboard. I replaced the motherboard and now my system appears to read the card correctly. I’m leaning toward something wrong with the old PCIe slot.

Thanks for all the replies.