PCIE Bios Voltage.

[Preacher]

Hi,

I have just bought a MVF & 3770K which replaced a Rampage Formula & Q9450. After reading and altering settings I have it running stable & 4.4, 1.13V.

My question is :- I have a 580 GTX which ran at .956 stock voltage and idle temp of 28c with my RF but with the MVF it runs at 1.006v stock which causes my idle temps to 43c. Now after playing with the bios the 580 suddenly went back down to .956v and 28 temp. When I checked the ROG GPUZ it was showing as PCIEx16 1.0 which caused the drop in voltage, then under load it went to PCIEx16 2.0 and the voltage went back to 1.006. I have since reset my BIOS and I can't for the life of me find the setting which dropped the 580 to PCIEx16 1.0 when idle to give me my 28c temp.

I could be just hoping that it was something I changed in the MVF BIOS, so if anyone knows which setting drops the GFX card to a lower voltage when idle I would appreciate knowing which one it is.

Thanks for reading, and I hope I made sense.
Jim

[SUKARA]

Did you installed any power saving software tool?

[Preacher]

Thanks for the reply SUKARA,

I havent installed any power saving software, the only thing I can see for definate is the adaptive setting in the Nvidia control panel, but that has never changed the ROG GPUZ to go from PCIe 1.0 @ idle to PCIe 2.0 under load. It is definately strange, I have reset the BIOS with the CMOS button and I will try from scratch again.

The 580 card was running for about a week at the higher 1.006 voltage and 43c idle, then after exiting the MVF BIOS after I had changed a few things it had dropped to .956v and 28c idle. It might have just been a coincidence.

[Chino]

Maybe it's a coincidence because the MVF doesn't have a lot options for VGA tweaking unlike the MVE which is VGA Tweakers Paradise where you play with voltages and such. What settings were you playing with in the BIOS?

[Preacher]

Hey Chino,

From memory, the settings I changed before the drop in voltage was to switch from AUTO to GEN 3 in the NB PCIe config, disable the iGPU multi monitor, and the render standby, left the iGPU memory on AUTO, and set the primary display to PCIE. Switched the CPU currant capability from 100% to 120% and the CPU fixed frequency from 300 to 400.

[Chino]

Those settings shouldn't change anything with the GPU's voltage at all. But try setting the Link Speed to Gen2 since the GTX 580 is PCIe 2.0 after all. Other than that I have no other suggestions for you to try. lol

[Preacher]

Thanks mate, I have just noticed that when my monitor goes into standby and the computer is still on the 580 drops to .956v and the temp drops to 28c. Guess I have a bit more digging to do.

I thought that GEN 3 related to the i7 3770K being a 3rd generation Intel CPU.

Thanks again.

[Chino]

Actually those GEN settings are referring to PCIe. GEN1 - PCIe 1, GEN2 PCIe 2.0, etc... 😛

What is your Windows Power Plan? Try Balanced. Also take a look into the PCI settings. I'm pretty sure there are a few in there for the PCI energy options.

[Preacher]

I think I finally figured it out. As well as disabling the iGPU in the BIOS I also have to uninstall the hd4000 intel graphics and disable it in the system settings. Then my 580 runs at .965v, which gives me a 28 c idle temp. Is there something wrong with the 1604 BIOS, or is it just the MVF ? I have gone through my whole computer life buying motherboards that don't have inbuilt graphics to save on conflicts, but I have no choice with the 3770K as this has inbuilt HD4000 graphics. What I don't understand is when I disable the iGPU in the BIOS it doesn't disable, it keeps coming back like a bad penny. Every time my computer starts, it searches for the driver, if I have disabled the iGPU in the BIOS then surely it should be disabled.

Also I disable the onboard sound, bluetooth and wifi, then sometimes not all the time when I check in the BIOS they are magically enabled again. Is there any way to disable the iGPU and stop onboard things from enabling themselves ?

[NemesisChild]

There are known issues with 1604 regarding bios settings not sticking.
This is the reason that I've stuck with bios 0804, which is running perfectly stable for me.
Regarding your GTX 580 power state, if you haven't already, install GPU-Z.
Click the ? tab next to the Bus Interface caption and run the render test.
By design, Fermi and Keplar are designed to run in lower power states when not doing 3D rendering.
Thus, it will run as PCI-e 1.0 when inactive or at idle.