If it improves by itself in the same slot then its probably an I/O issue with the motherboard, I would try increasing voltages (small increments!) in the BIOS for North Bridge, I/O related chipsets, and PCI-E. Depends on your board and chipset what you should adjust though.
If the card improves after moving it to the other slot, then it could be that slot it was in is having issues, try another if available.
Hope this helps.
I think the OP mentioned that the hash rate is fine.
I notice something similar with the OP - even at the same hash rates I have a GPU solving more shares than the other one, I assume it has to do with the way the mining software allocates them across GPUs.
OP - try switching the cards between them in their slots - make GPU 0 - GPU 1, and the other way around. See if the difference persists.