GTX 680 4gb: Not impressed with performance. Why?

Yeah something is wrong. My performance should be much better. Is everyone in agreement its my CPU and not a software problem?

My friend just sold me these both for $250.

Newegg.com - EVGA 131-GT-E767-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 SLI 3 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601960


I'm not crazy about either of them, I would prefer an i5 3570K Ivy, and any 3-way 3.0 PCI EXPRESS SLi mobo.
But for $250 this should make a much better use of my GTX 680 right?

essenbe said:

Assuming everything works right, that is a good buy. It is not the 'top of the line' set up, but is a very good board and CPU. If iy sll runs well, you made a very good deal. I am still not convinced that your CPU was holding your 680 back that much. But, we will find out when you put the card in this new rig.

What do you think it is? My Unigine scores were horrible compared to others with 680's and those with video cards below that lol.

If you have any other ideas I'd be grateful to hear them, but the proof is in the pudding, there is definitely something wrong.

Just upgraded my system. Bought an ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 and an i5 3570K. See new benchmark image.

However, I think it may still be low.






SYSTEM SPECS:
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
MOBO: ASROCK Z77 Extreme 4
CPU: Intel i5 3570K 3.4 GHz
RAM: GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) 4x4GB = 16GB
GPU: EVGA GTX 680 FTW 4gb
HD: Western Digital 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache 6Gb/s
PSU: 850W
CASE: Cooler Master HAF 932 ADV BLUE ED
MONITOR: ASUS 27'' and Gateway 19'' (old flat screen hand-me-down)

essenbe said:

What are your temps while gaming? With EVGA Precision X you can set a custom fan profile to keep temps down. You shouldn't have any problems with temps, but some do. The GTX 600's will begin to throttle at 70C. Did you ever run any benchmarks with your 560 TI? If so run them with the 680. The 680 should more than double anything you can get with a 560 TI. You should also be running driver 306.23 which can be downloaded from the Nvidia web site. I really don't know if your CPU is holding you back or not. But, if you do decide to change, I would consider a Z77 board and an Ivy Bridge CPU. That will give you PCIe 3.0 rather than PCIE 2.0. Whether that is an advantage or not is debatable, but it was for me.

Try running Ungine Heaven 3.0 (free basic edition) with all settings maxed out. As soon as it finishes loading press F9 to run the benchmark. You can compare your scores with the ones in this thread. https://www.sevenforums.com/overclock...rk-scores.html

It should give you some idea.

I'm closing this and marking it as solved. This was the best answer and the advice I took. It did greatly increase my scores although not what I expected. Thank you everyone who gave their time to help. Thank you Essenbe for your sound advice.