Is my card getting bottlenecked?

[Misanthrop]

HP - Pavilion HPE-118-uk

CPU Type - QuadCore Intel Core i7-2600, 3500 MHz (35 x 100)
CPU - Sandy Bridge-DT
Min / Max CPU Multiplier 16x / 34x
L2 Cache 256 KB per core (On-Die, ECC, Full-Speed)

Motherboard ID - 63-0100-000001-00101111-062311-Chipset$0AAAA000_VER: CHG711.ROM VCHG7.11
Motherboard Name - Pegatron 2AB5
PCI 2.0 x16

Memory - 8GB DDR3 SDRAM

2TB Hard drive. (Western Digital)

GTX 680 Gigabyte, Windforce.

HX650 Corsair PSU.

So I downloaded BF3, played that on ultra settings with the lowest frame rate being 58, and the highest being 154, which leads to, what I believe is an average of 75ps, which is ok for me.

So I decided.. "Hmm lets see what this thing can do.." I downloaded Crysis 2, played on the highest settings, with DX11 enabled and High res textures, and if I'm inside a buiulding the frame rate is not bad, around 47, but if I go outside and look at a big enviroment the frame rate drops to about 25 with the lowest being 20, which as you can understand is not playable.

Now is this a common thing that the 680 is just not good enough to play Crysis 2 at those settings, or is something going on in my computer. I know that the card is a PCI 3.0 but I've read many threads, including some on here that said the difference between speeds is less than 1% (From an Nvidia employee, or Mod)

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[trapper]

What resolution are you playing? A different resolution could mean you have great FPS at those settings or terrible FPS.

At 2560x1440 (or x1600) you're doing just fine. At 1920x1080 there might be something going on.

 

[Misanthrop]

Yeh I was playing at 1080. Monitor is 22 Inches.

 

[trapper]

I should have looked at your AA before as well. If you're running it with max AA then you're going to see those drops. Try running it at 2xAA. And what happens if you turn off the extreme textures? Running it without the full AA or extreme should make it a very playable experience.

And can you overclock your CPU past 3.5ghz? What are it's temps? That should get you a few more FPS as well.

Overall though the PCIe 2.0 isn't going to cause any issues.

 

[Misanthrop]

Ive witnessed a max of 60.c across the board (CPU / GPU) at max settings on BF3 and Crysis2, never seen it go higher.

There unfortunately isn't an option in the BIOS to overclock it, unless I haven't delved too deep, but I'm 80% sure there isn't, what program would you reccomend to overclock with.

 

[trapper]

I don't recommend that you overclock with a program at all. The ones that do work can really mess up your system. If there isn't a bios overclock then I'd leave it as it is. I have seen the 680 get better performance, but if you've really set it to full settings (including AA and the high res pack) then your frames aren't bad. Turning them down to 2xAA and no high res pack will be your best bet for Crysis 2.