M18x R1 GPU-z PCIe only at 8x

[svard75]

Hi All, Newbie to tweaking here but work in IT so not fearful. Anyway bought an AW M18x R1 5 years ago early 11. At the moment I spec'd it out with dual SSD and the GTX560M thinking it would be good enough. Well these days it isn't so purchased the Dell GTX680M 2GB card. Tweaked the INF files, installed great in Windows 7. Upgraded to Windows 10, tweaked the INF files again and installed drivers. All is well games play well. I'm not into benchmarking so don't have any tools installed except for GPU-z. What's confusing me is GPU-z is reporting my PCIe 2.0 16x@8x 1.1. I execute the ? and run the test for a while. Even in full screen it's pretty smooth. Exit still @8x 1.1. Close down the program and relaunch still @8x 1.1. I had the 240W PSU and upgraded to the 330W PSU. Re-ran the GPU-z test and still @8x 1.1. Does anyone have any ideas as to why? I sent a bug report to GPU-z just in case if it's something with Windows 10 that doesn't allow the demo to bump the PCIe bus speeds. Games seem to work only marginally better than my GTX560M.

Cheers for any feedback/ideas/knowledge.

[svard75]

Thought I would update my thread. I opened her up again and reseat the card. Checked all connections it's clean. I removed the stock thermal paste and applied Arctic 5. Nothing more needed. I reassembled and now see 16x 2.0 @8x 2.0. So that's cool I now see 2.0 but still cannot achieve 16x with one card. Have the base modded VBIOS 758CPU 1300VRAM and the unlocked A05 BIOS. I actually believe the PCIe v2.0 appeared after flashing to the unlocked A05 bios. Is there anything in there that I need to set to see 16x?