GTX 960 Reference Performance
The GTX 960 card used in our previous testing was overclocked out of the box. The ASUS GTX 960 Strix offers a 12% increase in rated Boost clock though we usually do prefer to use reference designs in our launch stories. However, both the Radeon cards in our test were also retail, overclocked models. The MSI R9 280 Gaming and Sapphire R9 285 Dual-X both have slightly higher GPU clocks than a reference design, so I think the comparison is a fair one.
Obviously I used a non-reference card for our testing with the GTX 960 because we had too – only those models were provided by AICs at this time. But in this instance it makes sense as there is a heavy weight to custom designs versus reference designs that will be on sale today. In fact, based on the data I've seen, I expect to see a 6:1 ratio of overclocked:non-overclocked models from all the partners you would expect including ASUS, MSI, EVGA, Gigabyte, Galax and more.
Still, we were curious what the difference would be for a user with a reference design compared to the ASUS GTX 960 Strix card we used so we decided to try to test it. These "reference" results are emulated and it must be said that it isn't exact. Because of the nature of Boost clocks and dynamic clocking, it is impossible to mirror another clock configuration by simply downclocking the GTX 960. My results will be close though: at stock settings the GTX 960 Strix rested at a 1404 MHz clock speed during gaming while in the downclocked state it was down at 1315 MHz. Also, memory speed was reduced from 7200 MHz to 7000 MHz in the emulated configuration.
In BF4 the difference between the two cards is minimal with both the Strix and emulated reference card able to stay ahead of the AMD options.
In Crysis 3 you can see the overclocked settings result in about a 5% performance lead over the reference settings, getting the GTX 960 closer to the performance of the R9 285 and R9 280.
A similarly small lead is seen in Metro: Last Light for the GTX 960 Strix over the emulated reference card but it does move the GTX 960 above the performance of the R9 280 that it wasn't able to do before.
As is usually the case, the out-of-box overclock of retail cards provides some modest performance boosts but it does not fundamentally change the positioning of the GTX 960 as a whole in the market. We'll see if some more manual overclocking can change that though…
i r disappoint
i r disappoint
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Why is the texture fill rate
Why is the texture fill rate for the 970 lower than the 980, aren’t they using the same memory architecture?
What is the minimum power
What is the minimum power supply requirements for 950 SLI
Live Q: can any other card be
Live Q: can any other card be used in SLI with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 ?
no, you can only sli with the
no, you can only sli with the same card family. i’ve read that some games won’t even work with different brand cards. I find that one hard to believe but worth double checking. 2 cards doesn’t give you 4gb of videoram. You will still only have 2 gb for gaming.
This is more of a GTX 950 Ti
This is more of a GTX 950 Ti to be honest. While the power consumption is excellent, the performance is nowhere near the x60 class. The gap between this card and the 970 is simply too big. A cut-down GM204 with 1280:80:48 3GB 192bit will fit the 960 monika better.
So when is this power
So when is this power efficiency going to turned into affordable performance? Nothing to see here.
This card is just is about as
This card is just is about as close as you can get to exactly as powerful as a gtx 760 with the same amount of vram and and a 128 bit bus. The only place you see true improvements are in the titles and benchmarks that Nvidia spent time making driver/firmware improvements. Look at older benchmarks like Heaven or 3dmark vantage and the gtx 970 and 760 are neck and neck. We got a much more power efficient card but at the same time a crippled memory bus to save money. Except for the niche htpc market (which I may or may not belong to) this is really isn’t that exciting and pretty much a sidegrade to the existing gtx 760. Even the compute numbers clearly show this.
I think a lot of people here
I think a lot of people here hating on the 960 are missing a key point – SLI. $200×2=$400. That’s $400 for great fps at 2650×1440 with high settings, barely any heat, and barely any noise.
I think it’s a great deal, and I think Nvidia has a TON of room to lower the price if they want/need. Who cares though, its still only $400 for 2x GTX 960 that can basically do everything youll need. Play more, worry less.
What about the people that
What about the people that don’t want to deal with crappy SLI profiles for games that are getting lazier and lazier with optimization. I want to spend money now for something that plays everything fairly decent and in a year or two buy another.
Will the 128-bit memory
Will the 128-bit memory interface cause any performance hit in modern games?
In layman terms, how does
In layman terms, how does Nvidia make their performance so smooth compared to the competition? It’s the one thing in particular I like about their products. 🙂
Do you know why the
Do you know why the performance differential for Crysis 3 is so much smaller than for the other games? I was considering this card for an upgrade, but if it doesn’t play nice with the CryEngine 3 (Star Citizen in particular) then it might not be worth it.
I am on the Sapphire Vapor-X
I am on the Sapphire Vapor-X R9 290 right now but I just don’t see anyone making a really smart choice by going for this slow of a card. I would at least get the 970.
Call optimization for what it is but PC games now are crushing through 2GB of vram all day long. Dying light at 1080p and max settings is hitting 4gb. Farcry 4 hitting 3GB. Shadow of Mordor 3.5GB. All of this at 1080p…
It’s funny to see reviews
It’s funny to see reviews about gaming GPU’s that emphasize power consumption, and decibel levels. My son and I game everyday for hours on a regular basis. We play games for entertainment because we have a little bit of disposable income I can use for just playing… paying a few cents worth of electricity extra is not even a concern, we saved more by buying a GPU with a better price.
Decibles… seriously? We aren’t playing in a library… and most gamers have headphones that make the decibel level of pc’s really un-noticeable. Even if we are recording with sensitive mics for gameplay uploads… our decibel level is not a concern.
Maybe it’s just me… and I just don’t understand the new sophisticated testing methods. But as a father who enjoys gaming with my son, price… and a GPU’s in game playability is my main concern. I refuse to pay the premium price some manufacturers charge just for a few less watts and decibles… we can use that saved money buying new games, and snacks.
Yes yes we all get it…the
Yes yes we all get it…the 960 isnt blowing anyone away with raw performance. At the same time, everyone is giving this card a ton of crap and saying how over priced it is…is this coming from the same crowd that has been paying $250 for a 760 as close as a couple months ago? A TON of people have a 760. The 960 gives you marginally better performance using much less power, giving off much less heat, less noise AND at $200. If power, heat and noise do not concerns you, then think of it as getting an overclocked 760 at a $50 discount.
Finally upgraded my Radeon
Finally upgraded my Radeon 5850 after a long and painful to tolerate card failure. So happy with this card.
NEVER AMD again !
Fry’s price-matched Amazon and same $10 rebate.
$189 after rebate ; )
Is it worth it to upgrade
Is it worth it to upgrade from my gtx 560 to the 960 because from looking at this review it’s not…