I recently got the Stealth perk for this and it shows only 2X damage for a successful stealth bow attack, not 3X like it should for a archer who has the perk and successfully attacks. Is it just the display is wrong, or does the perk not have any effect.

Are you using any mods?

No-strictly console-PS3.

You should be able to tell whether your getting it by selecting the right target. For instance, hit a creature with more than enough health to take a triple hit from you. Find the creature, then save. Stike the creature without using sneak. Observe how far the health bar goes down. Load save. Strike agin in sneak. Observe how far health bar goes down. You should be able to tell if it's double or triple damage.

Tip: you can adjust difficulty and also change to a weaker or stronger bow to match your damage output to the health of the creature you are using to test. For instance, if you have a smithed up ebony bow you could temporarily equip a long bow to do your testing so that you're not one-hit killing your target.

Tip two: If you're archery is leveled and perked and/or you have fortify archery items equipped, your arrow accounts for a great deal of damage, contrary to what is displayed in your damage output. For instance, If you have an unsmithed long bow and have no fortify archery items equipped the bow's damage will be 18 with archery leveled to 100 and all perks taken (triple its base damage). An iron arrow will have a damage output of 24, also triple its base damage. But when you look at your damage output in your weapon menu it will display only 26 total damage: 18 for the bow and 8 for the arrow. This becomes more pronounced the stronger the arrow you use and the more fortification you have equipped. The arrow's actual damage is never displayed, only its base damage. And with strong arrows and fortification the arrows actual damage becomes quite pronounced.

It's the first I've heard of this glitch so I'm not sure what is going on.

Occasionally, you'll get a bug with a new character starting out on console. That seems to be the case here, because with a new playthrough it showed I was doing 3X damage as expected.