HI CrissTM ;
Between did u received your Prize ??

Does pcie 2.0 makes no real difference in real life (games)
not so much , in order to update the motherboard for it , U deal here with additional 1-5 FPS @ high resolution (1600x1200 and above) , the higher the resolution the larger is the performance boost.
In which test those problem accrue ??
There is also a possible reason which is the monitor due to the slow response time . For gaming i highly recommend 2 ms response time with TN matrix (best currently).