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Tom's Hardware > Forum > Motherboards & Memory > Gigabyte > Z68X-UD3H-B3 still not using PCI-E 3.0 after BIOS update?

Z68X-UD3H-B3 still not using PCI-E 3.0 after BIOS update?

Forum Motherboards & Memory : Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 still not using PCI-E 3.0 after BIOS update?

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So last night I picked up a 7970 because I felt I was well overdo for an upgrade. (Had 285s in SLI x2) So I put the card in and had a bunch of issues with drivers to start with, but after I had that all sorted out I noticed I was getting less than expected performance in Battlefield 3. (40 fps on ultra) I came across quite a few benchmarks taht had it at never dropping below 54. So I do some Googling and come to find out my motherboard doesn't support PCI-E 3.0

I was bummed at first but then I found out that a simple bios update could enable. So I update to the latest bios and boot back into Windows. According to GPU-Z it is still only kicking over to PCI-E 2.0 when being put under work as seen below.

http://i.imgur.com/GAdNn.png

So I guess I have two questions. One, why is PCI-E 3.0 not kicking over and how do I make it? If I can't make it work, then is the 7970 even worth having without a PCI-E 3.0 capable motherboard, because I had a 580 in here for a short time and got much better performance on Battlefield 3. Posting the rest of my system specs below.

Intel® Core™ i5-2500K CPU @ 4.30GHz
8 GB DDR3 Crucial 1333mhz
GIGABYTE HD 7970
GIGABYTE Z68X-UD3H-B3 v1.0 (F11i BIOS)

Thanks for your help.

Reply to ketchupy
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The Sandy Bridge cpu doesn't support pci-e 3.0 , you need the Ivy Bridge cpu for that when it comes out. The reason the board has the pci-e 3.0 is because of that and you need a video card that supports pci-e 3.0 along with the cpu , so right now you are missing the cpu that supports pci-e 3.0.

Reply to inzone

I'm not sure that I've heard of a bios update that would turn a pci-e 2.0 slot on a motherboard into a pci-e 3.0 slot. I just looked up your board (which I didn't do before) and there is no mention of it supporting pci-e 3.0.
You have to have the MB , the cpu and the video card all with the capability of supporting pci-e 3.0. So far you only have the video card.

Reply to inzone
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