Help with getting PC to run at X16 instead of X8 for game recording

Risingdragonboy · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:20

Hello everyone

I been having two sleepless nights over, I believe to be a common issue with 2017 and older motherboards. My friend and if all goes well Co worker wants to start doing youtube but we have hit a huge problem when trying to record pc gaming footage on obs and it ending up looking unprofessional, lags at certain FPS and if trying to go beyond 20000 KPS.

Now I have not dealt with pcs that much in fact I am more knowledgeable on drawing and graphic softwares such as photoshop and kirita so all this gaming software is somewhat new to me. I do have some knowledge on pcs however and have been growing my mind since we started this three days ago but there something that I need to address as I can't find solutions else where is that is it possible to get a Tampa 2 HP 2017 model to work at X16 instead of x8 as I believe the Nvme is the main issue that causing this pc to be cap at x8 instead of x16.

Here some screen shots of the motherboard itself with specs too and with what I read so far I believe it can run at X16 but again I need some more advice as I am completely new to this much in depth information and problem solving say the least. I will also include the specifications of the desktop itself and wonder if it possible to upgrade the graphics card as that what I been looking into as well. Thank you in advance for any help and information I can get as I personally have exhausted my knowledge and can't proceed to a suitable solution.

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turbot1984 · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:26

Update bios and all board drivers?

alec · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:31

It is very unlikely PCIE x8 vs x16 will make any difference.
Sounds to me like a simple problem of not enough CPU performance.
Don't know much of streaming, but there was Nvidia based solution that uses GPU for stream encoding.

bremen1874 · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:34

The motherboard specs say it's configured with two x8 slots

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c05811928

If that is the case you can't do anything about it.

Is only having 8 lanes the problem anyway? It's only very recent high-end cards that need more bandwidth than x8 Gen3 offers.

Risingdragonboy · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:37

alec said:
It is very unlikely PCIE x8 vs x16 will make any difference.
Sounds to me like a simple problem of not enough CPU performance.
Don't know much of streaming, but there was Nvidia based solution that uses GPU for stream encoding.

When you say Nividia based solutions are you talking about the certain encoder options on certain streaming and recording softwares as we have try to set obs for example to Nividia H. 264 (new) but again seem to be having issues with the end results of the recording quality.

Risingdragonboy · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:43

bremen1874 said:
The motherboard specs say it's configured with two x8 slots

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c05811928

If that is the case you can't do anything about it.

Is only having 8 lanes the problem anyway? It's only very recent high-end cards that need more bandwidth than x8 Gen3 offers.

Ah okay I wasn't sure as you can see from the GPUz test I ran I got a tad confused if it was possible to run at X16 instead of X8 but besically can't seem to get a good quality recording from obs no matter what settings have tried always comes out will undesirable results say the least.

One guy on a obs discord chat told me it was probably an issue with the Nvme so was told to take it out and run GPUz again to see the difference though I wanted more opinions and advice before I go around and touch the pc components as I don't want to do something I can't undo. But what can you suggest anyway in terms of is it possible to upgrade the graphics card on this pc or not or should I look into new motherboards ect?I just need all this information so I am able to give my friend the answers he seeks plus then we know where we are going from here as well neither of us can afford a £2,000+ new pc at the moment so we need to try and make do what we have or at least improve it in someway or the other.

Risingdragonboy · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:58

turbot1984 said:
Update bios and all board drivers?

I believe so but I will have to double check on this.

bremen1874 · 16 Oct 2020 at 16:33

Risingdragonboy said:
One guy on a obs discord chat told me it was probably an issue with the Nvme so was told to take it out and run GPUz again to see the difference

If the slot is capable of running in x16 mode and isn't something must be stealing some of its lanes. The most likely culprit would be an NVMe drive or something else plugged into the other PCIe slot.

Risingdragonboy · 16 Oct 2020 at 16:39

bremen1874 said:
If the slot is capable of running in x16 mode and isn't something must be stealing some of its lanes. The most likely culprit would be an NVMe drive or something else plugged into the other PCIe slot.

I hope this helps answer that as I believe it can run at X16 and I thought so too that it the NVME drive if anything as others have said that same thing but I wanted to clarify at least and if it the culprit how can I change this?

bremen1874 · 16 Oct 2020 at 16:50

You've already seen that the specs say that it runs the two slots @ x8 each. That suggests that they're both connected to the CPU rather than one to the CPU and the other to the chipset. If the second slot was connected to the chipset you'd expect it to be running @ x4 and the first slot at x16.

Your only real hope is that the NVMe is stealing lanes. You can't test that theory without removing it.

How busy is the CPU when the frames are dropping? That's a more likely cause than the slot running @ x8 as that's still plenty of bandwidth for a 1070.

Risingdragonboy · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:08

bremen1874 said:
You've already seen that the specs say that it runs the two slots @ x8 each. That suggests that they're both connected to the CPU rather than one to the CPU and the other to the chipset. If the second slot was connected to the chipset you'd expect it to be running @ x4 and the first slot at x16.

Your only real hope is that the NVMe is stealing lanes. You can't test that theory without removing it.

How busy is the CPU when the frames are dropping? That's a more likely cause than the slot running @ x8 as that's still plenty of bandwidth for a 1070.

Ahhh okay that it explains things better for me and do apologise I am not that informed on pcs components as in certain parts of the pc so I am learning as I am going. So how do I test the CPU performance when thsi dropping occurs?

Also okay that helps me clarify then if I take the NVMe out and do another test it possible to see if it stealing lanes,however if it is the case that the NVMe is stealing the lanes what can I do from there?

bremen1874 · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:13

Risingdragonboy said:
Ahhh okay that it explains things better for me and do apologise I am not that informed on pcs components as in certain parts of the pc so I am learning as I am going. So how do I test the CPU performance when thsi dropping occurs?

Task manager will show you how busy the processor is. There may be a better way, but I don't play games or stream so I can't help with that.

Risingdragonboy said:
Also okay that helps me clarify then if I take the NVMe out and do another test it possible to see if it stealing lanes,however if it is the case that the NVMe is stealing the lanes what can I do from there?

If it is the NVMe, and it does make a difference, you could use a SATA SSD instead. They're slower, but it isn't usually noticeable outside of benchmarks.

Deleted member 77746 · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:26

X16 is the slot size..... (in your photo in first post) that’s what it means.

Each slot has 8 lanes. Not a single thing you can do about it on that board.

Your graphics card is PCI3.0 which has a max bandwidth.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-definition,5754.html

It may be the NVME taking up the rest of the lanes as already said I would be tempted to try a ssd and remove the NVME as a test.

bremen1874 · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:32

There is mention out there of the NVMe being to blame if you Google 'Tampa2 x16'. It's quite possible that HP is quoting it as x8 because that's how it works as sold rather than it not being capable.

Deleted member 77746 · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:33

bremen1874 said:
There is mention out there of the NVMe being to blame if you Google 'Tampa2 x16'. It's quite possible that HP is quoting it as x8 because that's how it works as sold rather than it not being capable.

The manual should tell us more if this is the case MSI would have stated somewhere I would have thought. I’m checking now.

bremen1874 · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:35

It's an OEM HP board (Tampa2). Unlikely that MSI has any information available.

Quartz · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:39

Risingdragonboy said:
but we have hit a huge problem when trying to record pc gaming footage on obs

Are you recording to the HDD or the NVME?

Deleted member 77746 · 16 Oct 2020 at 17:39

After looking it does indeed talk about this board having a bug. With an NVME drive installed it drops down to x8. People have said you wouldn’t see a difference anyway.