The system specs are fine for an older system. 870 is one of the faster 1156 socket CPU's and the OC speed is up to par with some modern CPU's. The techniques used in this CPU will be less efficient than in the newer CPU's.
There is headroom for a faster GPU card, but since you have the GTX770, we have to look how we can balance the quality/performance settings.
I know the Shadow of the Tombraider benchmark and it basicly shows how wel the system is performing with certain settings,
Since at the beginning of the thread, you stated you wanted high settings, but looking at the screenshot it seems you want ultra: The best quality the game can run on you PC.
Tommy Two tone has a point that with higher framerates you have a smoother game, but....... What refresh rates does your monitor support? I will get to this.
(nothing personal Tommy!!!)
If I look at the screenshot, the highest is above 50FPS, but the lowest is under 30FPS.
I used to work in the video/audio industry as a professional soundengineer and I know (and seen enough tests and clinical studies) that the human eye and brain are seeing
30FPS as smooth. It is not that strange that movies and video's are coded for a long time on 30FPS. When there was black and white TV it was in 30FPS (Not everybody remembers this)
When the colorTV was invented, they needed to add color information. This meant that a broadcast would take longer than a BW broadcast. To make this even they invented the dropframe speed: NTSC USA standard. This skipped a 1.8 frame every minute. This is an avarage of 29,97FPS. In that way a BW and color broadcast/movie ended at the same time.
No body notices the skipped frame.
Since games are played realtime FPS is more dynamic. If you would play a game at 20FPS all the time, at first it gives you an akward feeling. After a while the brain gets used to it.
if the framerate is not stable and dynamic the human brain wil register this as not smooth. A lot of people have this feeling when they start watching a movie with 'clay' figure stock animation. Even when the framerate of the picture itself is at 30FPS or with HD standards 60FPS, the animation itself can never be made as smooth as reallive acting, modern cartoons.
So if you game at 30FPS straight no dips, it wil register as smooth. You wil only see a difference between 30FPS and 60FPS as you show the material side by side. (Look up youtube video's with side by side comparison of GPU's.
If your monitor has a refreshrate of 30Herz, don't bother to let your PC work to get it at 60FPS. You wil only see 30FPS. With this knowledge, you can finetune a PC
To work not as hard. This means, less heat, noise and eventualy a better life span. Modern games have an option to limit the game at an certain FPS. By not having to work at a dynamic FPS rate, this gives headroom for other calculations.
With the benchmark it is clear that at moments the game has to calculate a lot of objects (sometimes the scene looks quiet, but al the moving leaves in the trees, Lara Croft's hair moving, birds woving is still taking its toll to calculate. With graphical settings on, that need a lot of calculating power of the CPU will take its toll on an acceptable framrate. The GPU can't calculate it fast enough. When playing on higher detail, it also takes a toll on GPU memory.
So you need to find a balance somewhere. I rather have a game to be on 30FPS all the time because my monitor runs at 30Herz than a game that drops and spikes over the place from 23FPS to lets say 60FPS. Above 30FPS your monitor doesn't simpy doesn't show the extra FPS, but below is vissable.
At some point, you are going to see the drops.
So if you have a monitor @30herz, cap the FPS at 30FPS. This trick is also used to put faster GPU's in older PC's to reduce bottleneck. Like my Xeon and GTX1070. I have a 144Herz monitor, but my PC can't handle this. Capping the FPS to 30FPS gives headroom to the GPU to do other things. No I can't play Sea of Thieves on the highest settings, BUT is runs really smooth and still look great. But not the best. PC gaming is always about the darn balance of Quality v.s. speed. Wanting both costs money.
So Tommy Two tone has a point about balance with ultra and medium, but since the CPU and GPU are pretty good matched, bottlenecking is not something I should worry about, but he has a very good point about the use of anisotropic filtering. Filtering costs a lot of GPU power.
Since you want a good quality gameplay 1405. I wil try to translate the benchmark into some things you can try to change=a balanced gameplay of quality and speed.
-Cap the FPS to 30 on Shadow of the Tombraider getting some headroom. (I played the game a long time ago, but I believe it supports capping FPS)
- Start lowering all heavy GPU settings like anisotropic filter and the ambiant occlusion. The last shows realistic light effects, but are not always visable. It DOES need a lot of GPU power.
Run another benchmark, play some games to see if you like it, If it runs rock solid above 30FPS, you can turn the notch up.
Try to do this with all GPU heavy settings. (shadows etc.)
If you like it, try to turn it on one setting higher. When you do not really see a difference with a higher setting, or you don't really mind the difference, put it back on the lower setting, to preserve headroom.
You can also do this with other games.
But there is always the limit with what a game is programmed for and what the GPU can do.
So when turning off all graphical settings, does not help in getting a stable FPS and it is dipping under the 30FPS and bothers you,
Detail settings like (HD) texturepacks can also be a limitation, because it needs more GPU memory. Some newer games need 8GB for HD textures.
Things like draw distance can make a difference. Do you want to put in on very far, while you can't see very far, since the distance is blocked by objects.
Simply why let your computer work very hard at things you wil not see, use or notice.
Like driving a sportscar in a high gear to get massive torque, but you can only drive 30. Useless (even in a normal car) because the ride is going to be bumpy, agressive and not feeling smooth.
Sometimes you can even find a nicer result in not using a high detailed resolution texture pack in combination with some higher filtering, etc.
Like my son complaining a game didn't play nice with a monster PC, but a full HD 30Herz monitor. He was using a texture pack used for 4K gaming.
His PC was working too hard for something you can barely see.
There is a lot more to write, but eventualy you 1405 are the person that decides what is feeling and looking right and what is not.
Good luck
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