Full setup feels underwhelming; Upgrade?

[anarkeygodslam]

First off, the build:

I7 930 OC'd to 3.4ghz on water cooling
ATI HIS 6990 with turbo switch on (fan is set for 60% and never goes over 70*C while gaming)
12GB Corsair Dominator PC1600 DDR3
128GB Crucial M4 SSD Primary (OS and 1-2 games)
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM (backup)
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W PSU
Bigfoot Killer 2100



All benchmarks are in the low range for the same system setups. I do not know off hand the scores, but I can update this post when I get home from work. Every game seems to get random hiccups, Skyrim (even setting the graphics lower) likes to sit at 30-40fps, which would be fine except random very low drops. Even older games (and lower game engines like in MW3) drop randomly even with AA off. Borderlands drops at random to 20-30fps. Fraps recording in ANY game will start fine, then within a few seconds drop to make the game unplayable. (Even games like Orcs Must Die!)

My card has heated up to a very high temp, which prompted me to contact HIS customer support. After email traffic determined my card was fine and numbers it was producing was good, it was stated my card is fine.

I have thought about a second SSD, and saving Fraps files to the SSD. For space, I would just take videos and put them on my backup after. I am not sure if I am having a legitimate problem, or if I am just thinking my PC is more than it really is. I am thinking of upgrading, but will wait for the next set of CPUs.

Side Note: There is 1 issue I have noticed, and I am not sure if this might be an issue. I updated the BIOS a week or so ago, and it crashed my system (mind you, I have had these issues long before). To recover, it required the windows disk, and put a system file on my backup drive now. Now there are 2 system files that show as if they were hard drives in my computer, 1 on each drive.

 

[Raiddinn]

Can you tell me what your case maker/model is and how many fans it has pointing in which directions?

 

[Murissokah]

Firstly, your system looks good enough, should be putting more frames than that. Then again, you never told us the resolution you are using, nor the graphical settings. Skyrim has a lot of driver and optimization issues, which I also suffered and fixed with a beta driver combined with 1.4 patch and CAP2.

 

[dextermat]

Fom my experience:

This is software (fraps) problem not hardware.

I had this kind of problem with a core 2 duo.

Fraps started fine and then after a while FPS would drop silly until I disable fraps..

 

[anarkeygodslam]

Sometimes I put too much info, sometimes I miss important info. Sorry about that.

AW2310 monitor, 120hz @ 1920x1080
Skyrim I have turned down settings from ultra to medium, it doesn't change much between.

As for the case, it is a Thermaltake Element V VL20001W2Z Black Steel SECC with 1 front and 1 top fan blowing in, 2 rear fans blowing out which probably doesn't matter much since I leave the side off.

 

[Raiddinn]

Try stripping down to a bare bones system with only 4 or 6 GBs of RAM, take out the killer card and use regular onboard networking, and take out the data drive.

Do all that and see if the FPS changes.

If you have another video card laying around try putting that in instead of the 6990 as well.