PCIe 3.0 Ready PC - DirectX 12

Here is my current setup:

I'm running an ASUS P8H77M motherboard with an ASUS GTX 970 STRIX installed in the single PCIe 3.0 slot. The CPU is an Intel Core i5-3570K. I have an old mechanical HDD for storage, but all my games are on a Samsung M.2 drive which supports PCIe 3.0. I also have 8 GB of DDR3 RAM at 1600 MHz and I'm running Windows 10 Pro.

I found a video online explaining how to enable PCIe 3.0, since everything seems to be defaulting to 2.0. The guy in the video claimed he saw a massive jump in FPS after doing this. I followed his steps exactly, but no matter what game I play, I'm stuck at "only" 60 FPS. Has anyone dealt with this before?

The other issue is that everything runs on DirectX 11 regardless of what I do. I updated to the latest Nvidia drivers, and System Info says everything is DirectX 12 compatible, yet the performance stays on the older version. Any idea why?

Just my two cents...

PCIe 2.0 isn't going to bottleneck a card like the GTX 970, nor even the latest Titan XP. It's not like you can just 'enable' PCIe 3.0 technology... either the hardware supports it or it doesn't. Honestly, any performance jump from 2.0 to 3.0 is negligible, maybe even within the margin of error. An M.2 drive might theoretically be a bit slower on 2.0, but you probably wouldn't even notice it.

The only reason you might be seeing a flat 60 FPS in every single game is if you have VSync enabled in your graphics settings, which caps the frame rate to your monitor's refresh rate (60Hz).

The version of DirectX a game uses is determined by the game itself (usually just 11 or 12 for newer titles), whereas System Information shows DX12 because that's the highest version your system supports. Personally, I'd stick with DirectX 11; Nvidia tends to perform better in DX11 most of the time, and let's face it, DX12 isn't always the best-optimized version in many games.

I've never really gone down the rabbit hole on technical specs. My main goal was just squeezing every bit of performance out of my current setup. Since the LGA 1155 socket is pretty outdated and I snagged a great deal on the CPU, I decided against upgrading the motherboard and processor. Instead, I put that money toward a used graphics card.

I'm looking at getting a new monitor soon. Do you think it's better to go with a 4K high-resolution screen or stick with a standard HD model that offers a higher refresh rate? Personally, I'm leaning toward 4K, but the price tag is steep. Honestly, I’m even considering putting that cash toward a PS VR headset instead.

If you're planning on picking up a 4K monitor, just a heads-up—your gaming experience might take a bit of a hit. You’ll likely find yourself dropping most settings down to low just to maintain a decent frame rate (it really varies from game to game), mostly because that GTX 970 is pretty bottlenecked with only 3.5GB of VRAM.