What's holding my PC back?

might be a drivers problem

your system is fine and the 920 will run anything you throw at it... overclocking wont bring huge amounts of performance in games maybe 1-2fps in crysis for instance.
so its unlikely to be the root of your problem. then again you havent given any detail other than in your opinion its not doing as it should...
use fraps and see what your min/max and avg fps are in games like dirt3, crysis 2, crysis, if you have em. run a benchmark like heaven bench or 3dmark06/ vantage and 3dmark11.

http://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-Gateway-TBGM01-Mo... check here they claim they have a bios that can be unlocked for your motherboard, but be aware this can potentially damage your board and gateway wont replace it under warranty as you have voided it by trying to over write there lockout...
its a risk i would take but on your own head be it if you try it...

7870 is still pretty new, drivers are often not the best this early. Your system is fine though. Pretty beast actually. Any game in particular you feel is not performing as well as it should?

@hexit. Well my 920 does not run anything i throw at it. I do use fraps but i don't own those games. I have heaven bench and i get the average FPS a 7870 would get(uploading pics). Also thanks for the link but i have thought about it and did some research about that bios unlock and i don't really trust it.

@nocturnal. Yea alot of people tell me my system is beast yet it doesn't feel like it.

FPS in GTA4 is 1-10 on everything maxed and 40-50 on high/medium, shadow/night detail off, 40 view/detail distance.

BF3 gets 30 fps in big team games with drops to 20s frequently, never smooth

Skyrim drops to 30-40 fps on ultra high detail NO mods. When i put on all my graphical mods it looks amazing, but drops to 20-30 fps.

For some reason Team fortress 2 drops to 20-30 fps sometimes and its not even maxed out graphical wise.. plus its such a old game...

So i was planning on buying a new motherboard to OC my processor but lots of people tell me it won't make much of a difference. Well what can i do to make my pc run games better?

Also this is the wrong place to post this but all info is nice i guess. I have been getting a certain BSOD recently with the error code 0x0000001e . I have spent countless hours trying to find a solution and so far i have not had a BSOD in 24 hours so lookin' good... but i have a feeling its not fixed and is potentially the cause of my slow pc? Next BSOD i get i am re-seating all my RAM/graphics card like the online sites told me to do. Just felt like letting anyone who cares know.   thanks.

Here is the heaven benchmark. Did 4 tests got about the same results as many 7870s online.



But my games still run slow so yea... any help any1?  

First thing I see, outside of the hardware, you are running Vista. Try to get a copy of XP or Windows 7.

thats actually a correct score for your setup. so i would suggest you clean out your old drivers and run a reg cleaner like ccleaner. 1s done reboot and reinstall your fresh drivers...
get fresh motherboard nfo, audio,ethernet, and gfx drivers
install em and again run a reg cleaner and maybe defrag 1s done...