I had forced difficulty, but not at 1. Just tried setting 1 now moving five blades over to it. It seems to be artificially inflating my successful share rate with a bunch of worthless low difficulty shares. My DOA is 25% after running it a bit. It is better in that my observed hash rate is better, so if I were to get a share I suppose it would be better, but the DOA rate is still crazy high compared to my other equipment.

Edit: My DOA is now steady over 32%