EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSuperClocked Review

[Guest]

It takes a lot of moxie to name a graphics card SuperSuperClocked, but that's exactly what EVGA did for its new GeForce GTX 960. Let's see if this board is impressive enough to earn such a lofty designation.

EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSuperClocked Review : Read more

 

[damric]

Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264

 

[Derek Furst]

Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264

intel hd4000 is better than a gtx 980. See, i can say things that aren't true as well. Not only is the 960 the SAME price on newegg, it comes with the witcher 3 (a 60 dollar game i was going to buy already) and on passmark, the r9 280 only scored like a 4100 something while the 960 scores 5980.

 

[Grognak]

2GB for a 1080p card... That's not acceptable anymore.

 

[damric]

You don't have to use newegg.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($164.99 @ Micro Center)
Total: $164.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-19 03:43 EDT-0400

Who uses Passmark to test graphics cards?

Now try running Fires Strike Ultra and watch the GTX 960 fall to its knees.

 

[damric]

I question the mental capacity of anyone who would spend $210 on a card with such a narrow memory bus.

 

[Koushik Majumder]

2Gb is not acceptable anymore at 1080p

 

[caj]

the 280 will finish this hands down. also the 128 bit highly cripples the possbility of sli. it would have been considered mayb it it had a bandwith of 256bit.


www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11230-00-20G/dp/B00IZXOW80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426752176&sr=8-1&keywords=280

I've removed the other two copies of this post - SS

 

[MasterDell]

Really sad to see Nvidia put 2GB on and such a small bus :"(

If 3GB I would have been pretty impressed but that is not the case..

660 is 2GB, 760 is 2GB, 960 is 2GB and so was the 860M if that counts.. So Nvidia, maybe time for a change so that AMD doesn't slap you in the mid-ranged GPU area like this did in the 7** series. Most of the consumers will want to buy those $180-$250 cards and when they come to us and ask us what to get we would have obviously said the 270-280x (depending on their budget) Nothing that Nvidia had to offer could come close because their prices were so high. I have never suggested that anyone should buy a 760. But now the 960 is an option but due to that extra VRAM the 280 has, I will still suggest it.

 

[Nuckles_56]

Your test system is interesting with the 3 gtx 980's used for testing

Asus Matrix Platinum GeForce GTX 980
1241MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1753MHz (7009MT/s)

Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Omega Edition
1203MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1762MHz (7048MT/s)

Reference GeForce GTX 980
1126MHz GPU, 2GB GDDR5 at 1750MHz (7000MT/s)

 

[sonny1973n10]

"Worth every penny"

Yeah right! Who would spend $210 for a 128-bit?
The 384-bit R9 280 is cheaper, performs better and has more room for OCing.

 

[Memnarchon]

Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264

While I disagree that R9 280 is faster, since the Tom's Hardware Index 1080p, shows GTX960 as faster and the factory models even more faster (to HD7970 and GTX680 levels), you said something that it should be sticky to every PC hardware site:

Who uses Passmark to test graphics cards?

Noone should use these incredible misleading sites like Passmark (for CPUs or GPUs), GPUBoss and CPUBoss.
Especially for gaming. I remember Passmark showing GTX670 faster than GTX690...

 

[ykki]

the 280 will finish this hands down. also the 128 bit highly cripples the possbility of sli. it would have been considered mayb it it had a bandwith of 256bit.


www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11230-00-20G/dp/B00IZXOW80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426752176&sr=8-1&keywords=280

I've removed the other two copies of this post - SS

Not to mention sometimes the pricing of the 960's breathe down the better 280x's.

 

[jbc029]

Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264

While I disagree that R9 280 is faster, since the Tom's Hardware Index 1080p, shows GTX960 as faster and the factory models even more faster (to HD7970 and GTX680 levels), you said something that it should be sticky to every PC hardware site:

Who uses Passmark to test graphics cards?

Noone should use these incredible misleading sites like Passmark (for CPUs or GPUs), GPUBoss and CPUBoss.
Especially for gaming. I remember Passmark showing GTX670 faster than GTX690...

And you should also realize that the particular part that you're referencing in the Hardware Index was the overall performance of the 7970 reference card with no overclock at all *when it was released 3 years ago*. It does not reflect 7970 performance today, after years of driver optimizations. This particularly high overclock on a 960 can *almost* perform like a 280X that costs $30 more and has no overclock at all.

 

[NinjaNerd56]

Own this card, love this card.

 

[ohim]

Almost 70°C.. and they call AMD cards hot.. i game at 73-75°C with OC 290 Vapor-X....

 

[ohim]

Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264

While I disagree that R9 280 is faster, since the Tom's Hardware Index 1080p, shows GTX960 as faster and the factory models even more faster (to HD7970 and GTX680 levels), you said something that it should be sticky to every PC hardware site:

Who uses Passmark to test graphics cards?

Noone should use these incredible misleading sites like Passmark (for CPUs or GPUs), GPUBoss and CPUBoss.
Especially for gaming. I remember Passmark showing GTX670 faster than GTX690...

You do realise that that is an index not a direct benchmark

 

[TechyInAZ]

Nice card! Is this the one with 4GB? if not I hope you make a review on that one.

 

[Khaosix]

Attention all 960 Haters. Toss all of the specs aside. Look at real benchmarks and tell me how the 960 is not better than the 280? REAL GAME BENCHMARKS. Not synthetic benchmarks that are meant to stress the video card to the max limit. And how are people saying that the 960 is garbage in SLI because of the 128bit? Go check some 960 SLI($420) benchmarks and watch it outperform the GTX 980($550). And how about power consumption? Go read up on some 280 power consumption and tell me if you can drop the 280 into a machine without considering a PSU upgrade. In the end, this comment will be ignored and people will persist spouting garbage. haters gonna hate.

 

[Winterblade7]

Where are the REAL GAME BENCHMARKS in this review?? will have to wait for Anantech to do the real indepth review as always

 

[Khaosix]

Where are the REAL GAME BENCHMARKS in this review?? will have to wait for Anantech to do the real indepth review as always

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_960_SSC_ACX_Cooler/

 

[Justin C]

All you 128-bit bus morons...crawl out from under the AMD rock you've been living under. The GeForce 980, with a 256-bit bus will beat an AMD 290X, with a 512-bit bus, in just about any game under the sun.

Efficient use of the bus is more important than "bits"!

 

[ohim]

All you 128-bit bus morons...crawl out from under the AMD rock you've been living under. The GeForce 980, with a 256-bit bus will beat an AMD 290X, with a 512-bit bus, in just about any game under the sun.

Efficient use of the bus is more important than "bits"!

1st of all you have no idea what those bits mean, and what nvidia does to achive what it does trough compression, simply put Nvidia couldn`t handle AMD`s bus width so they went for compression of the image to get away with it otherwise their cards would be too expensive witha 512 bit bus.
As for 980 is almost double the price vs a 290 in my country which makes it a stupid buy since the card is not 2 times faster , 970 is amazing for a 3.5 GB card though

 

[junkeymonkey]

one thing I like about evga is that they try to keep there cards size more compact to help in case fit - like even there 980 is not overbearing can be had at 10.5" x 4.376" in size

 

[Justin C]

All you 128-bit bus morons...crawl out from under the AMD rock you've been living under. The GeForce 980, with a 256-bit bus will beat an AMD 290X, with a 512-bit bus, in just about any game under the sun.

Efficient use of the bus is more important than "bits"!

1st of all you have no idea what those bits mean, and what nvidia does to achive what it does trough compression, simply put Nvidia couldn`t handle AMD`s bus width so they went for compression of the image to get away with it otherwise their cards would be too expensive witha 512 bit bus.
As for 980 is almost double the price vs a 290 in my country which makes it a stupid buy since the card is not 2 times faster , 970 is amazing for a 3.5 GB card though

You are aware AMD did the exact same thing with Tonga (R9 285), right?

Yes, I know what those bits mean, but you clearly have a misunderstanding of the following concept:
Efficient use of the bus is far more important than the bus width and it's theoretical throughput.