XPS 8960 (2023), GPU only running at x8 PCIe 4.0 speed

That is perfectly normal and expected. GPU installed in x16 PCIe slot typically use less than half of the maximum x16 PCIe lane bandwidth.

”with the release of PCIe 4.0, some graphics cards got cut down to x8 or even x4 lanes. Since a PCIe x8 4.0 slot supports the same maximum transfer rate as the previous-gen PCIe x16 3.0 slot, NVIDIA and AMD opted to save a few bucks on their budget options by cutting down the cards to 8 lanes.”

https://www.howtogeek.com/the-pcie-version-doesnt-matter-for-graphics-cards-like-you-think/

The XPS 8960 setup doc confirms that the x16 slot only runs as x8.  



And at least one of the x4 slots is only wired x2. 

All that is stated below the XPS 8960 back panel image.

The spec for RTX4060:

GeForce RTX 4060 is connected to the rest of the system using a PCI-Express 4.0 x8 interface

there is nothing wrong with OP's RTX 4060.

Even though it's not a big deal in practice, another step down from the XPS 8950 which is running my 3060TI @ x16 v4.0.

Thanks for all the information guys I have a lot to think about, was planning on upgrading the OEM 4060 to an Asus RTX 4060 Ti 16GB card and use the PC as an A.I image generation platform using Invoke AI and Stable Diffusion locally, can anybody tell me if the x8 PCI-E limitation affect how fast an image is generated using the above apps, having the larger VRAM will let app load large models completely into the GPU otherwise it will offload half of it to system RAM hence slowing down the whole process.

@Naskel1965​ 

There are numerous articles on the impact on PCIe speeds and usually it's single digit numbers.

Still, with a 4060TI, I would not be concerned.

Now with a 5000 series RTX which I would say would be a better GPU choice for you, not really sure on that yet.