I've just purchased an MSI GTX 970, popped it into my MSI P67-GD65 (B3) motherboard and it didn't work at all. Popped the GTX 570 back in and that works. So I randomly try the 970 in the PCI-e slot underneath and it works. No issues I hear you ask? Well... Two things - 1) Why doesn't it work? 2) I've tried upping the settings in rFactor 2. Other people who have a GTX 970 that play it report no issues, but mine just doesn't feel like almost £300 worth of card. It's still a bit stuttery. To the point where I think I'll lower some settings. So are the issues related? Is it not working correctly because it's not in the correct slot? Is it something to do with PCI-e 3.0? As always, I appreciate any help or assistance.
If you uninstalled/installed the card drivers ok, & got the 8-pin & 6-pin power supplies both hooked up (& assuming you did) & it all seems a bit meh.. - how about your cpu? not being funny, but maybe now that is a bottleneck? I'm asking this as you haven't got your pc specs displayed under your avatar I went from a gtx760 to a gtx970, & with everything on high/ultra (in rF2/AC/pCars) there hasn't been an "interstellar" jump in frame rates, but what there is now (as well as approx 30-40% higher fps) is amazing stability - it's like the card's never really being tested..
Thanks all. Looks more serious that I thought. Turns out Pci-e slots on motherboards work at different speeds. For some reason my 970 doesn't work on the 16x one, just the 8x. Not many solutions for me really, I've read that I might need to flash the bios but I can't even figure that one out.
Sounds a bit like a mobo(slot most likely) issue to me. I have the same model card and I put everything on max(shadows, reflections off), and I get a minimum of 100FPS. Why don't you just run it in the x8 slot for now if it runs fine? You will have like a 0.1% performance difference, if that. Here is some evidence - they used a GTX 980, but the gist is the same: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html
If you going to get another motherboard get 1150 ( H/Z 97 ) Sell your board/cpu should almost cover a new Processor ( depending what it is of course ) and the extra bang from Pcie3.0 makes it worthwhile. P67 is Pcie-2.0 ( Sandybridge) Not sure if you have a K or overclock but a Non K Haswell (4690/4790) and H97 run fantastic.
Exceptional input guys. Thank you. I've decided that the amount of frames per second isn't enough to warrant upgrading right now. I'm going to wait for the new Intel cpus to come out
I don't know what Nvidia...or possibly Gigabyte did, but I just installed a new GTX970 and it will not let me enable PCI-e 3.0. It will boot and run fine as long as GEN2 is selected under the motherboard's PCI-e sub-menu. It absolutely will NOT send a monitor signal if GEN3 is selected. Funny thing is; the PNY GTX670 I swapped from used GEN3 and the RMPcieLinkSpeed registry hack, to enable PCI-e 3 for the last two years.... with zero problems. The setting gave a massive boost to RF2 framerate but more importantly...smoothness. The 970 is fast but I'm at a loss as to why it won't boot with GEN3 or enable PCI-e 3.0 as the older card did. View attachment 16844
I'm sorry to hear you're having issues too. I had a reply from MSI and they just said to pull the ram out and try again. My board is out of warranty now
Thanks. I think I'll also try reloading an older driver as well...currently on 352.86. Though PCI-e 3.0 is not 'officially' supported on the X79 platform/w Sandy Bridge-E, there is no reason why the three year old card should work and a brand new GTX970 shouldn't. The GTX670 benefited massively from the PCI-e 3.0 turn on...both in fps and smoothness.
Another thing, which failed for me, but flash the bios? Hell why not even find an unofficial bios? I found one on the MSI website but once again it did nothing for me.
So I completely uninstalled the Nvidia drivers including all reference to Nvidia in the Registry. I installed the laptop Hotfix driver (353.00)...went back into the registry and created the RMPcieLinkSpeed key. I then restarted the computer and went to GEN3 in the BIOS. I simply can't believe it.... After a delayed startup (I'd actually walked downstairs and when I came back up, it had booted)....I got PCI-e 3.0 back. I don't know for other platforms, but it adds a massive boost in frames and smoothness to the X79 setup. This morning with PCI-e 2.0, I was getting 146 fps with Mid-Ohio and the new 1.63 Indy car. It miraculously jumped to 195 fps with PCI-e 3.0 enabled and no other settings changed....none.
It's still a mystery as why rFactor 2 is one of the only videogames in existence to benefit such a massive amount from PCI-E 3.0 @ 16x when most games can hardly fully saturate PCI-E 2.0 @ 16x / 3.0 @ 8x, and the games that do literally have like 2 or 3 % differences not 10-40+ % differences like in RF2. Such a mystery. Maybe some insanely inefficient coding which very easily saturates PCI 2.0 @ 16x / 3.0 @ 8x? I wouldn't think so as ISI have been at this a long time, but I don't know what else it could possibly be. Unsolved mysteries.
It's really strange how one setting can add so much to RF2. I was prepared to send the GTX970 back, if PCI-e 3.0 could not be enabled. It's that big of an increase in performance and smoothness. The GTX670 ran everything surprisingly well with PCI-e 3 enabled. My sole reason for getting the GTX970 was simply to be able to turn up those last few sliders and have enough buffers. I'm absolutely 'over-the-moon' with the result. RF2 is absolutely silky smooth...with every setting maxed out...except wind and crowd motion.
Why isn't PCIe 3 supported on the x97 (from what I read above)? Isn't that a newer board? I'm just asking as I'm using the older z87 with w/c the GTX970 works fine in the PCI-e 3 slot. Or did they give way to another technology?
I do believe most later Intel CPUs have native support...as opposed to those used in X79. My board is a Biostar TruePower X79 which requires manually installing a new registry DWORD value to enable PCI-e 3.0. The performance increase is a bit astounding once it's done....in both Rfactor2 as well as Assetto Corsa. I've read lots of article disavowing that fact for some later motherboard/CPU combos. Raw numbers don't lie in my case. I can actually replicate the loss and gain simply by turning it off and on and watching the performance...all other parameters unchanged. I found the increase purely by accident while running a posted benchmark test here a few months back.
Seems an old thread but I'm having the same issues as OP upgraded a gtx660 to a 970 4g. The pcie x16 slot shows on gpu-z as running at x8. Sometimes at x1. All fresh installs, clean drivers etc. I replaced the old gtx660 and gpu-z has that at x16. So the mobo and slot are working, is this a busted gpu problem?
