Bad performance with GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980 G1 GAMING ?

[SplinterCell]

Before anything, here are my specs:

AMD FX 8320 Overclocked at 4.0 GHz (stable, low temps)
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980 G1 GAMING
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3
PSU Sirtec - High Power Element BRONZE 600W
Hard disk WD Blue 1TB SATA-III 7200 RPM 64MB
8 GB DDR3 RAM
60 Hz Monitor 1920x1080

I bought a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980 G1 GAMING 2 days ago. I upgraded from a Sapphire Radeon R9 285 Dual-X. As soon as I installed it and got the latest drivers and everything I rolled some games to test it and see if it was worth it. I was surprsied to not see the difference I was expecting. I DID NOT edit anything in the NVIDIA GeForce Experience because I have no idea what settings i should tweak there if i should tweak any at all. This is my FIRST NVIDIA product ever.
In Witcher 3 with settings on Ultra (no hairworks) I am struggling between 50 and 60 fps. It still is a major improvement from what I used to have (AMD R9 285 Dual X) but shouldn't I be getting more ?
Same story with AC Syndicate, the fps is all over the place. It is true that with my old card I could not even run the game, but again I was expecting more than 40-50 fps performance on this card.
My question is simple: Should I return this card ? Because something does not feel right. From what I've seen in a ton of benchmarks and so on, the performance should be higher. I am worried that the card is not running as good as it should. The resolution I ran these games at was 1920x1080.
Again sorry I sound like a newbie, it's because I am one. I would love to hear opinions on this topic !

 

[Spaniard United]

Witcher - http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--vu0SQdBP--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/u5iqavadfkn4ybvuplv4.png

AC Syn - http://media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2015/game-bench/ac-syndicate-bench-1080-ultra-high.png

Your results seem perfectly in line with other benchmarks.

 

[Bossyfins]

Spaniard is correct. Your not getting the FPS in the bechmarks posted above because they use high end intel CPUs. Your 8320 could be a SMALL bottleneck.

 

[SplinterCell]

Thank you for the responses ! I was afraid my card was faulty but now that i look closely at the benchmarks the performance seems fine. I will keep the card then.
Could i please have your opinion on the next upgrade ? I only care about performance in games. I was thinking maybe adding another 8 GB of RAM. But I would love to hear from other people ! Thank you again for the responses !

 

[Sinistercr0c]

Given you have already OC'd your 8320, you could (as a test) increase that OC to 4.2 - 4.4Ghz to see what impact that has your frame rates? If you currently have low temps and a cooler capable of removing the extra heat then it would be a quick way of seeing if the extra horsepower gives you a decent bump in frame rates. If it does then it might be more beneficial to do that than spend on additional memory (which I don't believe would make a significant difference to what your getting now)

 

[SplinterCell]

I understand. Although I understood I could overclock my gpu as well if I am not mistaken. Should I consider that over OC the CPU even more ? Also I read something about tweaking settings in NVIDIA GeForce Experience for better performance. I did not do that because it's my first NVIDIA product ever so I don't want to mess it up. Any thoughts on this ? Also thank you for the fast answers ! You guys are awesome !

 

[Sinistercr0c]

You don't need to OC that GPU...its a beast already. You don't need to touch your Geforce settings either as the card will handle almost anything you throw at it. If it were me, I'd would look at bumping your CPU OC first and see where that gets you. You could turn off AA (anti-aliasing) as you might get a few FPS more but I understand that AA is a GPU function so it may not get you anything.

 

[SplinterCell]

Thank you again for your answer good sir ! I will not touch the Geforce settings then since I don't wish to mess up anything. For the most part I am just trying to see if my gpu is running as good as it should. Maybe some of my cores are parked ? I read about this problem in similar posts. I have no idea how to find out if they are parked or if I should or not unpark them. Any opinions ? I read about this parked cores issue here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2726075/system-bottlenecking-gigabyte-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-gaming-6gb.html

 

[SplinterCell]

After a small inspection I found out 4 of my 8 cores are parked according to the Resource Monitor. My obvious question now becomes: should I unpark them in order to have all of 8 active all the time ? Or should i leave them as they are ? I only wish for an increase of performance in games and i read that some people are getting significant performance after unlocking the cores. What should I do ? As always I appreciate all the thoughts and opinions on the matter !

 

[SplinterCell]

I decided to run a benchmark test with Unigine Valley.
Preset: Extreme HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
AA: x8
My score was 2010. Max temp was 65. Min FPS 15, Max was 90 and the Average was 55. Is that normal for this card and this cpu ? I did not OC my Gigabyte GTX 980 at all but I did OC my FX 8320 to 4.0 GHz as I stated previously. Thank you for reading, awaiting answers !