EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSuperClocked Review

[Grognak]

Except it's been proven that the GTX 960 struggles much more than cards with a wider bus when reaching 2GB in some games, and that in those cases SLI doesn't help because it's a memory issue. It's a problem we're gonna start seeing even more as games start using a lot more VRAM.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I guess until AMD's cards come out to see whats the real deal then in this class ??? with this gap between releases its like buy now and regret latter or wait till latter and regret you did not buy now ??

 

[logainofhades]

If Nvidia operated like AMD they would have taken the 4 year old GTX 580 and overclocked it to the max and then slapped a GTX 960 sticker on it. Instead they came out with new silicon that sips energy, is cool and doesn't even need the fans to run most of the time.
I guess for some people you are not "gaming" unless your video card sounds like a leaf blower, is able to heat a wooden shack in Montana in January and causes a brown out in your neighborhood every time you run Furmark.

The gtx 760 and 770 would like to have a discussion with you. Nvida and AMD both are guilty of rebrands. Turn off the fanboy mode.

Benchmarks show the GTX 960 is faster than the 280, and uses less power doing so. Yes, some titles the 280 might be better in, due to the ram limitation. The cards are in direct competition. Both are great cards, and have their strength and weaknesses. The GTX 960ti will hopefully be released and be the card that people actually were hoping for out of the GTX 960.

 

[junkeymonkey]

LOL.... ''and be the card that people actually were hoping for ''.. ya, that line sums it up

 

[logainofhades]

The 960 is a great card, but it did not live up to the expectations people had for it. Most were hoping for GTX 770/R9 280x type performance. Instead we got GTX 760 +10%/R9 285 performance. Considering the GTX 970 and 980's impact, most people, myself included, had a higher expectation for the card. I fully believe we shall see a GTX 960ti, that will be the card that the GTX 960 was expected to be prior to its launch. The GTX 960 would actually be great for what I need. I just happened to get a GTX 770 really cheap.

 

[junkeymonkey]

well lets say AMD new 370 has better performance then this 960 and is sold for 185-220$ with a 256 bus and 4 gb memory will that force NVidia to place there card at the 150$ or so 750ti level ??

 

[logainofhades]

I am sure it will force a price reduction. That is the great thing about competition. That is what annoys me so much about fanboys, on both sides. Without competition, we would not be anywhere near the performance level we have today.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I think NVidia and AMD has a new agreement that they will not release new lines of cards at near the same time so each can command I high price point for a length of time .. like NVidia 900 cards got nothing to keep that in check and now its going to be 6+ months before the amd cards come out from the NVidia 900 release.. so NVidia has all this time to keep the price up so theres this buffer zone to reap profits with out a need for a sudden price war

 

[Calculatron]

The 960 is a good piece of hardware, it is just in a really tough price bracket. After releasing their higher-end cards, and AMD's price-drop of their higher-end models, the 960 is up against some stiff competition.

I hope that there is a follow-up review of the 4gb edition of the 960. All these arguments about the bus are frought with confusion and misinformation, and we need some more data to help put things into place.

 

[junkeymonkey]

don't forget NVidia has a buss enhancement thing on the 960 that makes the 128 buss optimized some how or way and acts like a 256

 

[dalauder]

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

NVida's Maxwell does great with low memory bandwidth. Compare the 980 to the 780 to see what I mean.

 

[Swordkd]

So the r285 out-performs the 960 in most titles, and costs less... Lose/Lose for nVidia on this one.

 

[junkeymonkey]

no then you run into things like whats said here

AMD hasn't released an updated Catalyst Linux driver in three months (sans an early beta posting to Canonical) and their new open-source "AMDGPU" DRM kernel driver has yet to appear that's needed for supporting the Radeon R9 285 and the forthcoming Radeon Rx 300 series and Carrizo APUs. We were told this new kernel driver would likely start surfacing in the winter but we have yet to see that happen. The AMD R9 285 Tonga that's been available for over a half-year now is thus left without any open-source driver support at the moment until this new kernel driver appears

so amd slacking for a Linux user ?? get there card and hope and wait ??

 

[Adroid]

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

Well My 2GB GTX 770 has been playing games on ultra fine @ 1200p since I bought it. But yea I should probably have more DRAM for bragging rights.

 

[junkeymonkey]

well looking over at like newegg the reviews seem to be good from end users .. so far nothing about coil whine or only able to use 1.5 of the 2gb memory ??

 

[Thomkat2]

I agree with the people that say sufficient use of your bandwidth and bus size, is far more important than just size alone. Has anyone here realized why it takes AMD so long to come up with good drivers compared to NVidia? They obviously are not as advanced in the usage of the hardware that they have. So to take care of that issue, they expanded their bandwidth and bus lines to make up for it. All you guys saying having a bigger bus is better (if they have the same memory capacity) are right, BUT only if you are truly optimizing it! OR how about this.. Ever wondered why going from x8 to x16 on sli or crossfire makes little or no difference on performance? It's because they have yet to make full use of the bus lines and bandwidth with the current drivers and software when going to x16. this is all an opinion so don't go making asshole remarks

 

[junkeymonkey]

well that's one more thing about AMD its like they don't keep folks around long enough to finish anything they start -- quit -fired -retired -or just moved on

 

[junkeymonkey]

what about this feature that the 960 has I guess full support but the 980 and 970 don't ?? you would think for that 550$ 980 it would offer all the tech seeing its the top card as of today ?? look over this guys rant and theres others like him wondering the same ??? [he seems more pissed ]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/809510/what-is-going-on-with-the-980s-hevc-h-265-encoder-and-hardware-acceleration-decoder-for-hevc-/


anyway you would think the top high dollar card would have all the bases covered ?? but he seems to think hes got shorted

 

[littleleo]

All the game benchmarks I've seen show the 960 besting the 285, 280 and lower even with 2GB and a 128 bit. The best testament to that is AMD had to drop it's prices to compete. The 280X and above are faster than the 960, and thanks to the 960 are available now at a new low price. It will be interesting to see if a 4GB or Ti versions are released. So far for my customers the GTX 960 is out selling the 270x, 280 & 285 combined. So the public likes them better.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I thought AMD's delay excuse was due to there partners overhead of old card still in inventory ?? so they lowered the price to move them out ??

R9 380X should be released by mid February, early March then and now its june ?
so when june rolls around will it will be November??

of course all this is from the rumor mill reports

 

[littleleo]

So is the R9 380x the Captain Jack GPU that has be rumored to be coming out since last Thanksgiving?

 

[junkeymonkey]

unveil it thanksgiving 2014 and on the shelves thanksgiving 2015 .. sounds about right on this deal

 

[InvalidError]

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

2GB RAM is perfectly fine for 1080p on a GPU with only 128bits memory bus. Just for the heck of it, I tried a few games at 5760x1080 on my 1GB HD5770 and that worked surprisingly well at medium-ish detail level. (I only tried it simply because I could and out of curiosity to see what surround gaming looks like. Tomb Raider sent my friend ROFLMAOing when I showed him Lara Dwarf.)

The main reason why GPUs with wider memory interfaces need more RAM is to duplicate resources across more channels to increase the effective bandwidth. That's why you see 256bits GPUs use about twice as much memory as 128bits GPUs even when the resolution and details are the same, ditto for 384bits and 512bits GPUs.

With stacked DRAM coming to GPUs in 2016 though, off-package memory bus width is about to become a secondary concern.

 

[ykki]

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"!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/shadow-of-mordor-performance,3996-4.html
Look at 4k bench.

http://www.techspot.com/review/962-evolve-benchmarks/page4.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/far-cry-4-benchmark-performance-review,4019-4.html
Look at 4k bench.

 

[rigald]

Palit gtx 960 super jetstream was available long before this. And yes its the fastest gtx 960 factory overclock. Just because Palit is not a mainstream company doesn't mean it sucks.