First build, need help diagnosing a problem

[Antiquejelly]

Hello, my build is as follows:
Core i5 2500k
MSI Z68A-GD65 Motherboard
8Gb G-skill 1600 MHz memory
Gigabyte HD 6850 1Gb
OCZ 600 Watt PSU

I am having two strange and possibly related problems with this computer. First, upon booting, it makes what sounds to be five beeps- 1 one and 4 short, with the second short beep being even shorter than the other three. I spent some time trying to troubleshoot this but the manual was unhelpful and I could not find the source of the error. What was strange to me is that the computer proceeds to boot just fine. I installed windows and proceeded to verify that all of the hardware is recognized, which it is. I thought it might be a problem with my 6850, so I ran both furmark and the ATITool stress test, both of which it passed with stable framerates and low temps (60-63C).
What is puzzling to me is that despite these benchmarks I am getting very low framerates in certain games, and these framerates remain low (10-15 FPS) no matter what graphics settings I pick. I switched the card to the second PCI-e port to see if that was the problem, and now I am getting excellent framerates in one game but my framerates in another tanked.
So I guess my questions are:
Is my 6850 DOA? I hesitate only because it passed both stress tests- can graphics cards pass stress tests and still be bad?
Are the beeps during POST related to the graphics card problem? I thought that at first but they persisted even when the graphics card was disconnected.
Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[foverosiv]

take out both the ram and the GPU, then reseat seat them, also, what is the temperature on your CPU?

 

[luis mizuchiro]

I got similar problems in the past because the catalyst was trying to override the original in-game configuration, and that caused weird things like very low frame-rates and black textures everywhere. Try checking the catalyst center and uncheck any "override" box that appear in tabs like anisotropic filtering. Took me like months to accidentally find this, and i wrongly blamed the games.

 

[calmstateofmind]

Might be a useless question, but are all drivers up-to-date...specifically your video drivers? As for the beeps, for all I know they could be normal for that mobo. My P55 made 4 beeps every time on start up (one beep with pause, then three consecutive beeps) and that was natural.

I doubt it's a CPU issue because the PC passed both stress tests. They would have failed miserably if the CPU wasn't correctly installed/configured.

One last thing...what speed is the slot that your graphics card in? And what was the speed of the other, the one that it didn't work in?

 

[Antiquejelly]

Video drivers are up to date (v 11.7)
I did my best to find and update all other drivers. As far as I can tell they are all the latest versions.

CPU runs at 40C off-load; haven't seen it above 65 load but I haven't been watching religiously.

Both PCIe slots on this MB are x16.

I think I can disregard the beeps on start up. I went back to read some reviews on Newegg and it looks like that's an indication of how many USB devices are plugged in.

Went through the Catalyst Control center looking for overrides. I didn't find anything suspicious, unfortunately. I thought that was a good idea.

I'm going to try some other games and see if it might be the game. I'm currently running into trouble playing The Witcher (original).