GTX660 PCIE x16 incompatible

[droopyRO]

So i got around to finish my old games rig. Q9505, Abit IX38 and a Gainward GTX660.
http://www.gainward.com.tw/main/vgapro.php?id=893&lang=en this is the GPU
http://abit.ws/page/sa/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php@pMODEL_NAME=IX38+QuadGT&fMTYPE=LGA775 this is the motherboard.

Now my issue is that the card dose not work with any of the two x16 PCIE slots, the system won't boot, i tried reseting the BIOS after i inserted the card.
It works fine on the black x4 PCIE slot, got to play about 30 minutes of Total War Warhamme 1 and Metro Last Light Redux. The x16 slots worked fine with a HD5770 i had, and work fine with a HD6950 i still have.
I have the latest BIOS, has anybody encountered this type of issue before ?
Thanks.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Definitely sounds like an incompatibility issue. Maybe the motherboard is just too old for the 660 to work on it. Either way it looks like you require a bios from Abit or Gainward to make it work.

Could be a lost cause

 

[eidairaman1]

Grab the latest abit bios you can find, post a screen of the gtx card if you can.

 

[droopyRO]

I already have the latest BIOS.
As i said above, it works fine on the x4 slot don't know how much would that bottleneck the card. X38 is from 2009 and GTX660 from 2012 iirc, not a lot of time between them.

 

[eidairaman1]

As i said above, it works fine on the x4 slot don't know how much would that bottleneck the card. X38 is from 2009 and GTX660 from 2012 iirc, not a lot of time between them.

Well post the info anyway.

 

[agent_x007]

Card works fine on another board ?
I would clean PCI-e contact points on card with alkohol, and then checked if all PCB tracers/SMD elements are OK.
Next, I would use tape to block half of it's contact points (to make it "x8"), and checked if it worked. If card still wouldn't work, I would add another piece of tape to make it "x4" and check again.
Here's good example on how it looks : LINK.

If card works fine on black port, it SHOULD be compatible with board.
There is however a chance, PCI-e 2.0 mode from X38 chipset has "problems" with your GTX 660 (or BIOS has a bug preventing PCI-e 2.0 from working with it).

 

[droopyRO]

The 660 works fine on another motherboard. The IX38 mobo works fine with GTX8800GTX, HD5770 and HD6950.

Well post the info anyway.

 

[eidairaman1]

The only thing I can truly recommend is Updating the motherboard bios, after that you may either not want to risk borking your card but here are the bios versions under official. Look at the version codes, I see one that was compiled in november but could be older than yours.

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...l=GTX+660&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=

Here is the unverified list

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...l=GTX+660&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=
@T4C Fantasy when it was compiled was that done by y'all/us through GPU-Z or is that the official date the bios was made by Gainward?

 

[T4C Fantasy]

The only thing I can truly recommend is Updating the motherboard bios, after that you may either not want to risk borking your card but here are the bios versions under official. Look at the version codes, I see one that was compiled in november but could be older than yours.

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...l=GTX+660&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=

Here is the unverified list

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...l=GTX+660&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=
@T4C Fantasy when it was compiled was that done by y'all/us through GPU-Z or is that the official date the bios was made by Gainward?

Dates should be by company

 

[Papahyooie]

While I'm all for fixing a problem simply because it's a problem... if your aim is simply to play old school games, using the x4 slot should be just fine. Even PCI-E 1.1 x4 would not significantly bottleneck a GTX 660. TPU did a great write up of this, circa that time period. When testing a 680, relative overall performance (PCI-E 3.0 x-16 vs PCI-E 1.1 x4.... best case to worst case scenarios) performance was degraded by 25% from best case to worst case. A GTX 660, by comparison, would be affected by an even smaller margin. I don't have numbers to back it up, but it's probably in the 10-15% slower range.

Hardly ideal, but if your aim is just to play older games on older hardware, I don't think it's that much of a loss if you're looking to avoid buying a new board, etc.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/23.html

 

[agent_x007]

Try using "12" BIOS or older.
Source : LINK

 

[Deleted member 110753]

Maybe the motherboard is just too old for the 660 to work on it.

Here is what I got from my Asus P5E (X38):

 

[Kursah]

I wonder if it is an issue with the latest mainboard BIOS and initializing the PCI-e x16 slots? I agree with @agent_x007 to try an older BIOS. Abit is a company I'll always remember for a couple awesome boards, that both needed help/mods to be good at overclocking or heavy use. I remember my AS8-v needed to run an older BIOS and needed some resistor mods to make overclocking happen. Was fun till she burned up!

Do you have a different system to test that GTX660 in? I wonder if it has an issue booting in another board in an X16 slot...maybe some sort of damage or short with its pin array.

Are the pins in good shape on it past the 4X point?

 

[droopyRO]

Might be the BIOS, tried different settings and switched video initialitasion from PCI to PCIE, compatibilty to V1.0, no luck.
The board as seen in the picture has no dust in or on it. I changed the thermal paste under the heatsinks on the motherboard and the GTX660, i use AS 5.
The x16 slots work fine with any of the GPUs i mentioned earlier.
I guess it is a strange bug, i will not update or change any BIOS, as x4 will not be a big limiting factor for games such as FEAR series, Fallout 3/NV or any of the older games i plan to play on it for nostalgia. Thank you all for replying.

 

[Paganstomp]

Got a Asus P5G41C-M Socket 775 with PCI-e version 1.1 slot that gets a black screen with EVGA GTX 650 TI Boost ( w/ 6 pin power) 3.0 card installed. But works fine with a Gigabyte GTX 1050 2GB ( no 6 pin ) 3.0. I've been trying to find an answer to that for a couple of months now. The Ti Boost works fine in an Asus H97-M. Could it be that GTX 6xx 3.0 cards have issues?

 

[droopyRO]

Could it be that GTX 6xx 3.0 cards have issues?

They might have in some cases with LGA775 platforms :shrug: I wasted half a day and found no solution. The GTX660 card works fine on my Q67 and Z370 motherboards, and i got it cheap for around 50 $. For the moment i don't want to risk flashing a BIOS for a maximum of 15% performance increase on this old platform.

 

[eidairaman1]

They might have in some cases with LGA775 platforms :shrug: I wasted half a day and found no solution. The GTX660 card works fine on my Q67 and Z370 motherboards, and i got it cheap for around 50 $. For the moment i don't want to risk flashing a BIOS for a maximum of 15% performance increase on this old platform.

As long as you backup, you could try the motherboard downgrade first, then attempt the gpu update, from what T4C Says those date codes determine how old or new a bios is from Gainward.

 

[droopyRO]

I tried a RX560 2GB on the Abit IX38 motherboard, works fine. So the problem seems to be with the 6xx series cards.
I tried an older BIOS like suggested and it works with the GTX660 in the x16 slot ! thank you.
I do have problems with the CPU now showing 103ºC in BIOS and my previous overclock was unstable, but the downgrade was worth it.

The fps in TW Warhammer jumped from 36 average on 1080p low to 58 average.
Now to get a cheap 120GB SSD for this rig, as load times even on a 1TB Black WD are horrible it takes about 5 minutes to get in Warhammer 1

Thank you all for helping.
x4
x16

 

[qubit]

Does the GTX 660 require a UEFI mobo BIOS? If so, there's your reason. If not, see if you can find the latest BIOS for your mobo and flash it. If that doesn't help, then probably all is lost.

I think @Solaris17 made an archive of the Abit website before it shut down.

 

[droopyRO]

Don't know, but the issue is with the motherboard since with an older BIOS, the card works fine in the x16 slots.
I bumped up the voltage a bit from default of 1.28 and the overclock to 3.4Ghz (425x8)seems stable after 30' of RealBench. at about 60ºC.
m704d12 is the BIOS that allowes the GTX660 to boot and work with the IX 38 Abit board in the x16 slots.
m704d14 is the latest official Abit BIOS i could find, but the GTX660 works only in the x4 slot.

 

[eidairaman1]

Don't know, but the issue is with the motherboard since with an older BIOS, the card works fine in the x16 slots.
I bumped up the voltage a bit from default of 1.28 and the overclock to 3.4Ghz (425x8)seems stable after 30' of RealBench. at about 60ºC.
m704d12 is the BIOS that allowes the GTX660 to boot and work with the IX 38 Abit board in the x16 slots.
m704d14 is the latest official Abit BIOS i could find, but the GTX660 works only in the x4 slot.

Ok so you only downgraded the motherboard bios then.

You did not touch the gpu?

 

[qubit]

Don't know, but the issue is with the motherboard since with an older BIOS, the card works fine in the x16 slots.
I bumped up the voltage a bit from default of 1.28 and the overclock to 3.4Ghz (425x8)seems stable after 30' of RealBench. at about 60ºC.
m704d12 is the BIOS that allowes the GTX660 to boot and work with the IX 38 Abit board in the x16 slots.
m704d14 is the latest official Abit BIOS i could find, but the GTX660 works only in the x4 slot.

That’s great you got it going. I’d be curious to know if flashing the latest BIOS back and clearing the cmos would also work. I find it hard to believe that an older BIOS would have better compatibility than a newer one.

+1 to eidy’s question that you didn’t flash the graphics card BIOS?

 

[eidairaman1]

That’s great you got it going. I’d be curious to know if flashing the latest BIOS back and clearing the cmos would also work.

+1 to eidy’s question that you didn’t flash the graphics card BIOS?

Now I was just wondering if possibly that another bios file from this website could actually fix that incompatibility but it looks like he's got it working however for the temperature that act funny like that makes me scratch my head

 

[qubit]

Now I was just wondering if possibly that another bios file from this website could actually fix that incompatibility but it looks like he's got it working however for the temperature that act funny like that makes me scratch my head

That funny temp sounds like a BIOS issue to me. Running something like realtemp might show the true temperature.

 

[droopyRO]

That’s great you got it going. I’d be curious to know if flashing the latest BIOS back and clearing the cmos would also work. I find it hard to believe that an older BIOS would have better compatibility than a newer one.

+1 to eidy’s question that you didn’t flash the graphics card BIOS?

I value the graphic card more
In Windows the temp readings are fine in HWinfo and MSI Afterburner, they are wacky just in the BIOS.
I will try to flash the video card too when i get the time and then reapply the latest BIOS to the motherboard, will update this thread. Thank you.