Two weeks ago, we published an article about issues with PCI Express 5.0 slot speeds on newer graphics cards in certain motherboards. After powering on the PC, the PCIe slot often failed to initialize correctly, causing graphics cards to start with fewer active lanes than expected. With the new GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, the card was booting in PCIe 5.0 x1 or x2 mode nearly every other time. Gigabyte investigated the issue and addressed it with the release of the F5a BIOS.
I assume you have the latest BIOS downloaded and extracted in a directory on your flash drive. Before updating the BIOS, make sure to save screenshots of any settings you’ve modified. You’ll need a flash drive plugged into a USB port; take a screenshot using the F12 key. Saving user profiles with settings under the Save & Exit tab likely won’t help much – they usually only work with the same BIOS version and won’t load after updating to a newer version. This applies even if you’ve saved them to a flash drive.
You should also save your fan control settings separately. This is done in the Smart Fan 6 settings [F6]. Fan curves can be saved either directly to the motherboard or to a flash drive via the Save Fan Profile button [F3]. Definitely save them to the flash drive; the profile stored on the motherboard didn’t load for me after the BIOS update, but the one from the flash drive did. Screenshots, of course, are your safest bet.
You start the motherboard firmware update via the Q-Flash utility either by clicking the button in the bottom right corner or by pressing F8.
From the dropdown menu at the bottom, select the flash drive and the saved firmware file. The utility will calculate the checksum and will most likely prompt for a system restart. After rebooting, the firmware update begins. Once it completes successfully, the PC will restart.
After the reboot, the CMOS and firmware settings will also reset, and the board will start in Easy Mode.
After the reset, all my system fans ramped up to maximum speed and weren’t exactly quiet, so I quickly loaded the saved profile from the flash drive.
More detailed information about the current system state can be found under the System Info tab, where you’ll also see the current BIOS version F5a, among other things.
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I have the same problem. I have the GB AORUS Elite X870 WIFI7 and the GB AERO RTX 5060Ti 16GB. The system already had BIOS F5a before installing the 5060Ti. Before that, the GB AERO RTX 4060 8GB ran on my system without any problems. The new 5060Ti very rarely runs with PCI-E 5×8. Most of the time it is connected with PCI-E 5×1 or 2 after booting. This is very annoying and I have already flashed the BIOS but to no avail. The error still persists.
I’m at a loss. I’ve contacted Gigabyte Support, but it can take a long time for a response.
Thanks for letting us know. I was starting to think I was the only one who had a problem with it. But I guess not many people notice.
I’ll let the people I’ve addressed it with know and see what they say. It might take a little longer, partly because of the time difference and partly because everyone’s dealing with Computex right now.
It should still be resolved faster than through standard support, where they’ll just recommend the usual steps like uninstalling drivers, loading BIOS defaults, and other standard procedures.
They weren’t able to tell me which boards might have this issue, but it was supposed to be fixed with F5a. Apparently, it’s still not fixed on all of them.
It’s definitely not fixed. I’ve tried everything humanly possible to find the error, but unfortunately, so far, without success. It’s still a lottery whether the computer boots with 8 or fewer lanes. This is a sad state of affairs. I’m hoping for a new BIOS from Gigabyte. Previously, my RTX 4060 ran perfectly with 8 lanes on the WIFI7 board. I really hope you can achieve something better. Thanks.
Same issue here too. I have the GB AORUS Elite X870 WIFI7 with an rtx 5080. I had to run it in gen 4 to get it to work. System was running unstable with it on Auto or on gen 5. Have there been any update on getting this to work on gen 5 from Gigabyte?
Diego, Hello
So far, no solution has been found from Gigabyte Support. (This has been going on for a few weeks now. The problem is the response time from support: it can take up to six days for a response, which is catastrophic.) You should also open a ticket with Gigabyte e-support to expedite the process.
Hi -!
I actually managed to get a response, they provided what appears to be an unreleased bios version F6, however the issue still persisted after the flash. I provided a response back about this and will wait for the next steps.
Diego, Hi / Very interesting. I’ve been in contact with Gigabyte support for weeks, but I haven’t received an F6 beta. I hope this problem will finally be resolved in the long run; I’m slowly running out of energy.
I am also experiencing this issue with 5070ti on msi x670e. Latest bios does not resolve. Enabling spread spectrum eliminates freezes but it still runs at lower gen.
Hmm, so this is something that also affects other motherboards besides Gigabyte… thanks for sharing your experience! 🙂
I am experiancing this issue with my Asus Prime 5070Ti with an Asus x870e-e motherboard
It randomly changes pice lane speed from a cold boot or restart intermittently.
Hi,
The issue I had wasn’t with the bus speed, but with the number of active PCIe lanes changing randomly on pc startup.
What you’re describing seems to be the correct function and proper behavior.
Why Your PCIe Lane Speed Changes
This is normal behavior and not a fault. It’s caused by a power-saving feature called Active State Power Management (ASPM).
When Idle: When your GPU isn’t doing much (like browsing the web or showing the desktop), the system automatically lowers the PCIe link speed (e.g., from 5.0 to 1.1) to save power and reduce heat.
Under Load: As soon as you launch a game or any demanding application, the speed instantly ramps up to its maximum (e.g., PCIe 5.0 x16) to ensure you get full performance.
How to Verify It’s Working Correctly
You can easily confirm this is working as intended using the free tool GPU-Z.
If the speed increases during the test, your hardware is behaving exactly as it should.
Hi, thank you for your reply.
Here are a few screen shots of the issue im having
https://imgur.com/a/yDYSNCA
this second screenshot is the one in full screen render
https://imgur.com/a/doxv1Dw
Most times when I boot into windows it works as you have described but sometimes it gets stuck at 4.0 x 16 as shown.
I am using lastest bios version 1701, windows 11 with all latest updates.
This is the only problem I have with this motherboard everything else works flawlessly.
My cpu is a 9950x3d
RAM is CORSAIR DOMINATOR TITANIUM RGB DDR5 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 6000MHz CL30 running in expo II
I have no overlocks or undervolts everything is default in bios.
I have spent so many hours of the last month trying to find a fix but I cant find one that fixes this issue.
Anymore help would be appreciated.
Hi , I have this problem too, a new build 4090 strix oc , 7800x3d and MB is gigabyte aorus master x670e.
I’ve had issues were the pc boots to a resolution of 800×600 even though the screen is 1600×3840 , a when does this GPUZ can see the card but there are no details.
When it does boot at the correct resolution windows is slow and laggy , programs like GPUZ take 30s too open , if you move a window across the screen it lags and freezes.
GPUZ shows the pci express lanes as 16×4.0 @ 16×1.1 sometimes 2.0 this doesn’t change running heaven benchmark and 3dmark ends up freezing the pc.
The FPS in heaven is 7-8 fps. The power draw for the 4090 is 80 watts.
I think windows is laggy because the nvme it’s install on share bandwidth with the no.1 pce express slot , if it’s only running at 1.1 everything windows loads to ram is taking longer.
I updated the bios when setting up last month so will check for updates.
The gpu is on a riser cable so I’m going to put it into no.2 slot and see what happens.
Thanks for sharing your experience. 80 W on an RTX 4090 is really low. So it seems this (issue with activating a limited number of PCIe lanes) also involves GeForce RTX 40 graphics cards? 🙂
This bug solves?? any updates