GTX780 ACX SC unstable performance on MVIE Slot 3(B2)

[MetroRat]

I have experienced some issue with this motherboard. The third PICE slot from the top, aka PCIe 3.0/20_x8_B2, is causing any graphic card that sit on it performing poorly. I noticed this issue when my two GTX780s in SLI configuration, installed on slot 1 and slot 3 as Asus suggested, gave me poor performance in a random pattern. 2 out of 10 system restarts its benchmark results would go very low than it should, meanwhile the CPU would also be busy occupied by system interrupts, making browsing the internet painfully slow. To narrow down the cause of this issue, I reconfigured the SLI to slot 1 and slot 4(at a disadvantage of not using the native PICe lanes of the chipset) and restarted and tested the system for 10 times. Everything turned out to be fine which eliminates the possibility of bad graphic card/driver. Then I put a single graphic card on slot 1 and tested 10 times, no problem. However, when I put the same card on slot 3 and tested it for 10 times, the poor performance issue appeared again in the same pattern as it was in SLI slot1 and slot3 configuration.

Does anybody here have this kind of issue also? Or should I contact the seller for a replacement?

BTW:My power source is AX1200i, and I'm testing it using dual EVGA ACX 780SC with the case open to keep them under 75 celsius degree.

[Hopper64]

pennyboy wrote:
How is it going? do would you recommend I move to it from 0804???

I would since you are running 2 780s in SLI. I noticed a modest decrease of 2 fps in minimum going from 0076 to 1002 in Valley. I don't think it is significant. I am not sure 0076=1002. You may want to go to 0076 and see what happens. I think everyone had trouble with 0804.

[pennyboy]

Thanks for coming back to me. I will give 1002 a go tonight, would rather go with that BIOS since it is an official release BIOS.

[pennyboy]

Updated to 1002!! man I hate doing BIOS flashes, I have had two go bad in the past 15 years or so and I'm always so damn scared to do it. But in this case I had to suck it up and do it as I had no option if I wanted to use the B2 slot. Anyway pleased to report, the Flash went ok and 1002 has fixed my B2 SLI issues! stoked!

[shakaw]

I might try 1002 out of curiosity, it's not much work to flash a BIOS, besides, now I got cards I can actually insert and remove from this case without loosing half the skin off my fingers.

[pennyboy]

shakaw wrote:
I might try 1002 out of curiosity, it's not much work to flash a BIOS, besides, now I got cards I can actually insert and remove from this case without loosing half the skin off my fingers.

Ok cool, if your happy to upgrade to 1002! Can you please let me know how 1002 goes for you I'm interested to hear how it goes for you!!

[shakaw]

Flashed 1002, seems fine so far.

[pennyboy]

shakaw wrote:
Flashed 1002, seems fine so far.

Awesome great news!!!

[tObber]

Ok, have been testing both 0076 and 1002 BIOS the past 2-3 hours, but none of them seems to solve my problem with the B2 slot fully.
Both ones seems at least"better" than the previous one million BIOS i have tried 😉
I Am Using Valley 1.0 & Heaven 4.0 Bench for my testing.

Tried the 1002 BIOS first, and the problem I had before with (audio stuttering / crackling, CTD, "nvlddmkm error") seem to disappeared. But i still get huge fps drop and stuttering, and i almost lost 1200-1300 bench score.

0076 BIOS: At first it seemed to behave the same as 1002 bios. But at the end of the first run, and at the beginning of second, fps went down to like 5-9, and the stuttering, sound crackling, CTD and "nvlddmkm error" appeared.

Do I flash the BIOS the wrong way? 🙂 I usually put it on a USB stick to my front panel USB, and flash through ez-flash in bios?

/Regards

[tObber]

Just done some more testing with 1002 BIOS, and it is the same as yesterday.

I changed from BIOS1 to BIOS2 on the motherboard and flash the 1002 BIOS, just to see if it made any difference. And as I said in my previous post at least the "CTD", "nvlddmkm error" is gone, but I still experience huge fps drop after a while.

Is it any idea to give 0076 BIOS a second try?

/Cheers

[TL]

@t0bber, may i know which BIOS/setting works the best for you?