1155 Gaming Motherboard?

[generaldon]

Hi everyone.
I recently upgraded my pc with an Asus P8Z68-M PRO motherboard and an Intel 17-2600k cpu because I wanted more from my rig. My problem is that my main use of my pc is for gaming with great graphics. With my old motherboard, M4A79T Deluxe, I could do everything. Crysis, Battlefield, Fallout, GRID, Skyrim, and all on the highest graphics settings. But now I can't do any of them at all because they are so slow. Even Minecraft is slow 😛 Some simple benchmark tests show that the cpu is mathematically much faster then my previous one, so I've deduced that my motherboard is what caused the big graphics change. My grahpics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 ZOTAC.
So what I'd like help with, is there anyway to boost my graphics performance with this motherboard? Should I switch back to my old one that was working fine? Or is there an impressive motherboard suitable for gaming and graphics performance? My budget is preferably lower than $200, but I could go higher if need be. I'd prefer a new motherboard rather than graphics card, simply because I can still return my motherboard for a refund to get a new one. I don't have the money for a new graphics card.
Thanks in advance.

 

[abekl]

Your motherboard doesn't contribute much at all to performance - it's not where your bottleneck lies. Your problem is with your graphics card. A GTX 460 just isn't powerful enough for modern gaming. You need a 560 Ti or better card.

 

[geofelt]

The new motherboard will have NO negative impact on gaming performance.
Your problem lies elsewhere.
Do you have at least 4gb of ram? Less will not be good.
Your performance should be at least as good as before, and much better on cpu intensive games.

Post all of the before and after specs.

 

[generaldon]

I'm not convinced my graphics card is causing this, it worked fine before.
I have 12gb of ram, 1tb HDD, Windows 7 Ultimate, and the above posted specs. I'm not sure on my old cpu, however. The only things changed in this upgrade were the motherboard and cpu.

 

[andrewcarr]

Sounds to me like you need to install all of the updated drivers for your new motherboard and GPU.

 

[geofelt]

I also doubt your graphics card is a problem .

Did you do a clean install of Windows?

At installation, did you update your motherboard chipset drivers, is the graphics driver current?

If you used the same ram from the amd motherboard, the ram requirements might be different. Run memtest86+ for a while, you should get NO errors.

Run prime95 long enough to reach maximum temperatures. You should get NO errors.

If temps get too high because of a poor cpu cooler or mount, the 2600K will downclock to protect itself. Monitor that with cpu-z.

 

[generaldon]

I did do a clean install, and I installed the latest drivers for my motherboard.
Prime96 ran fine, I ran the Windows memory test earlier and it had no errors. Cpu-z also said it was fine.

 

[generaldon]

Okay so I guess I did something wrong? How do I fix it?