Interesting… adddressing multiple displays over multiple graphics cards seems to be what’s killing it for me, as soon as I reduce my desktop objects to only two(or one) from only a single graphics card, framerate is acceptable.
Putting all three monitors on one GPU effectively circumvents this as well.

Hello,
I hope it’s not too late for me to butt in, I’m experiencing similar FPS issues.

Smackdown, I find it rather hard to believe your system does not have a user-accessible firmware, either classic BIOS or (u)EFI.
Unless you’re running a Mac and Bootcamp deal, I’ve never heard of any system without at least the option to adjust the time and date.

From your posts I am getting the impression you’ve been slightly misinformed regarding Windows 8 and 8.1(and 8.1.1), it doesn’t remove BIOS access, a mere operating system simply CANT, but it also does not fully shut down when told to do so or when asked to reboot, a sort of hybrid shutdown/standby mode, which prevents the BIOS from rePOSTing the system.

I’ll assume you know at least where to find the Shutdown button within the OS, try hitting that while keeping the SHIFT key pressed down, this should circumvent the Hybrid shutdown and outright turn the whole bloody thing off.

Personally I don’t think “more modern” graphics cards will fix this issue, I’m running dual GTX760’s in SLI, gonna try to faf about with some settings…