A New Level of Power Testing
Maxwell is an impressively efficient architecture and we saw that with our original GTX 750 Ti review and then again with the GTX 980 and GTX 970 release. Not only was the GTX 980 able to outperform the likes of the Radeon R9 290X but it was able to do with substantially less power. While power consumption alone might not seem appealing to enthusiast gamers, you have to realize that indirectly translates into heat in your system and noise from it. Lower power allows for smaller cards, quieter coolers and an overall better user experience.
Let's see how the GTX 960 stacks up in our existing power testing infrastructure.
Well things are looking up for NVIDIA again in this department – the GTX 960 is using 46 fewer watts than the GTX 760 under a gaming load, and 80 watts less than the Radeon R9 285! These are not small numbers guys – the TDP of the GTX 960 is only 120 watts. You are using 60-70% of ANOTHER GTX 960 to get similar performance out of the Radeon R9 285 or Radeon R9 280!
But that method of power testing isn't as easy to decipher, isn't as direct. After all, we are measuring WHOLE SYSTEM power consumption above. What if we had a new way?
PC Perspective Advanced Power Testing Preview
In the coming weeks we are going to detail a brand new set of power testing methods we are using at PC Perspective to directly measure power of…well, everything if we can. This includes and starts with graphics cards.
How do we do it? Simple in theory but surprisingly difficult in practice, we are intercepting the power being sent through the PCI Express bus as well as the ATX power connectors before they go to the graphics card and are directly measuring power draw with a 10 kHz DAQ (data acquisition) device. A huge thanks goes to our very own Allyn Malventano for getting the setup up and running in time for us to get a sample of the kind of data we'll be showing in the future.
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What you see here is the combined total power of GPU power usage during a run of the Metro: Last Light benchmark. The beginning on the lines on the left (and the ending lines on the right) are the GPUs running at idle and you can see the quick spikes up during game loading and load.
So what stands out? The GTX 960, even in this overclocked state, is only using 90-95 watts by the end of the test run (which consisted of 175,000 samples). The GTX 760 was using 150-160 watts at its peaks. The Radeon R9 285 crosses the 200 watt barrier several times. This is made more interesting by the fact that the R9 285 claims to have a 190 watt TDP or typical board power, but we are definitely above that here.
The data we gathered does prove NVIDIA's claims that the GTX 960 was almost never approaching the TDP it set at 120 watts – and in fact in this one example we only cross 100 watts in a couple of quick blips.
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With this testing methodology we'll be able to get new details we weren't able to see before. Here is a zoom in of the beginning of our sample above showing idle graphics power. The GTX 960 is sitting at just around 7-8 watts, the GTX 760 hovers in the 13 watt range while the R9 285 from Sapphire is between 11-12 watts with a very regular jump every few seconds. What all of this means has yet to be determined but clearly our power testing will be much more interesting going forward.
Another thing we can check is NVIDIA's claim that you can play a MOBA like League of Legends or DOTA 2 at 30 watts with silent operation.
While I didn't fire up LoL, I did start up DOTA 2 and run through a quick single player example and the results were nearly on par. We ran the game at 1080p with maximum in-game quality settings and turned V-Sync on, limiting the frame rate to 60 Hz.
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The GPU power does start out nearly hitting the 40 watt level at the beginning of the in-game sequence but levels out at around 33 watts during game play. (This was measured with 241,000 data points.) I didn't hit the 30 watt mark in DOTA 2 that NVIDIA claimed would work in LoL but it is still easy to be impressed by a result like this.
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…