EVGA's New GTX 960 SSC Is Speedy With 4 GB

[Undying89]

This will be great for SLI builds especially, allowing you to add multiple monitors at high frame rates without vram bottlenecking.

the only problem then is performance cost vs a gtx 970 or 290x........
and the fact that a single card will always work as intended where dual cards dont always/.

Indeed. If 2GB cost 200€ then we can expect 250€ price mark for 4GB. For that price you can get a custom 290 that smashes this card in everything. Besides that it's getting really close to 970 price wise.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

Are you sure this card has a 'real' 4GB buffer, or is it handicapped at 3.5GB like the GTX970? Just want to check before another class action lawsuit is filed against Nvidia

 

[Onus]

I think it is a valid question to ask how the memory on this card is accessed; all the same, or is some of it gimped?
Second, without prices, this article is just fortune-telling, and more grist for idle speculation.

 

[java2]

3+1G ?

 

[yamilandres]

"4GB"

 

[razor512]

Any more than a $25 price premium, will make it a horrible choice, as the gtx 970 will offer a better price to performance ratio and not be too much more money.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

"I don't see a problem. This is most definitely a 1080p card, no doubt about that. But there are already games that use over 2GB of vRAM at 1080p, like Hitman Absolution, for instance. H:A needs nearer to 3GB for top settings. It's perfectly reasonable that many games in the near future will require up to 4GB for even 1080p. May as well start equipping them now. "

"Use" and "Benefit From" are two different things.

1. 4 GB isn't going to help the fact that for the 1st time in recent memory, two x60s doesn't crush a x80..... it doesn't even catch a 970 at 1920 res. Don't get me range, it help where SLI is supposed to help, it ties a 980 in Crysis 3, edges a 980 in FC4 and TomRaider but loses badly in SoM.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/23.html

There are many reasons for this as is described here:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/25.html

4 GB will help at 2560 and above but I don't see that as the target audience of the 960.... the 1920 performance is SLI is utterly disappointing. A 970 is the logical better choice as overall it performs better and is cheaper and it makes the 2 vs 4 argument is moot.

2. Using more than 2 GB and benefitting from 4 GB are two different things. Alienbabeltech could not load Max Payne ona 2GB 770 for example o 5760 res cause it "said" that it needed 2750 MB of RAM. So they put in a 4 GB card and it loaded just fine..... however after fooling the game into installing, and then switching back to the 2 GB card, not only did it run fine, it also ran with no drop in performance or image quality. And they found miniscule performance differences between the 2 GB and 4GB models .... and this at 5760 x 1080 res..... in some cases the 2GB performed better.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

" It would not normally allow one to set 4xAA at 5760×1080 with any 2GB card as it claims to require 2750MB. However, when we replaced the 4GB GTX 770 with the 2GB version, the game allowed the setting. And there were no slowdowns, stuttering, nor any performance differences that we could find between the two GTX 770s."

 

[blazorthon]

GTX 960 2GB SLI is about 30% more expensive (about $440 to about $330) and won't be much more than about 20% faster than a GTX 970. The increased cost of the GTX 960 4GB over the GTX 960 2GB will certainly make the price/performance ratio even worse. Also, the performance advantages of 4GB compared to "3.5+.5GB" on the GTX 970 would be minor.

4GB of memory capacity could be useful because some games use near or even over 2GB at 1080p right now and their number will increase as time goes on. Also, if you buy a GTX 960 4GB now, it is much more reasonable to upgrade to GTX 960 4GB SLI a year or two down the road than if you had a 2GB card. The low memory bandwidth is a little alarming, but so far the GTX 960 seems to cope well.

 

[blazorthon]

To answer people asking abou some of the memory being gimped like on te 970, the answer is probably no. This is probably just another instance of a card having double the RAM chips or expensive double capacity chips as some cards have had for ages, not some exotic memory configuration.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

GTX 960 2GB SLI is about 30% more expensive (about $440 to about $330) and won't be much more than about 20% faster than a GTX 970. The increased cost of the GTX 960 4GB over the GTX 960 2GB will certainly make the price/performance ratio even worse. Also, the performance advantages of 4GB compared to "3.5+.5GB" on the GTX 970 would be minor.

4GB of memory capacity could be useful because some games use near or even over 2GB at 1080p right now and their number will increase as time goes on. Also, if you buy a GTX 960 4GB now, it is much more reasonable to upgrade to GTX 960 4GB SLI a year or two down the road than if you had a 2GB card. The low memory bandwidth is a little alarming, but so far the GTX 960 seems to cope well.

Again, ... if ya read the numbers in the TPU article twin 960s now or in the future is cutting a wide swath.... if it's slower than a 970 today, it's going to be slower than a 970 a year or two from now. I did way more $410 SLI 560 TI builds than I did $500 580 builds cause the twin 560 Tis were 40% faster and a lot cheaper.... with the 6xx series, the performance of the 670's made them the top choice..... once word of the 780 Ti came out, with the 4200 price drop, twin 780s made great sense. The 960 just doesn't cut it the way those cards did.

And again, "use" and "benefit from" are two very different things. Max Payne 3 "uses" 2.75 MB of VRAM at 5760 and 1080 and will not even install on a 2 GB card. Put a 4GB card in, install the game, switch it for a 2 GB card and you get same fps, same detail, and same experience.

From the above link:

The GeForce GTX 960 SLI is not just undone by its own shortcomings due to a lack of perfect scaling in some games, but in being a whole $70 costlier than a single GeForce GTX 970. The GTX 960 SLI ends up offering roughly the same average performance as a single GTX 970 across resolutions. You're, hence, much better off choosing a single GTX 970 to GTX 960 SLI; that is, if you plan on buying two of these cards outright. The GTX 970 offers close to 20 percent more performance per dollar than the GTX 960 SLI in 1080p and 1440p.

It goes on to talk about how 4GB would be advantageous at higher resolutions but this card in SLI already has trouble keeping up with the cheaper 970 at lower resolutions so I fail to see how that is in any way relevant.

 

[none12345]

"I like how people how no clue why the 970 has 3.5gb in the first place. the 128bit bus has nothing to do with it. "

Hey you never know. LIkely true, but you never know.

4 block chip with 4x32 bit channels. If you use 512mb chips you get 2 gb. Or if you use 1GB chips you end up with 4gb. You cant have the fast/slow issue in either case because all 4 blocks are enabled.


However who is to say that when they use 8 chips, 2 per channel, there isnt some wierd slow memory access mode for the 2nd chip. Probably not, but one would have said the same thing about the 970, and look how that turned out.

 

[blazorthon]

Again, ... if ya read the numbers in the TPU article twin 960s now or in the future is cutting a wide swath.... if it's slower than a 970 today, it's going to be slower than a 970 a year or two from now. I did way more $410 SLI 560 TI builds than I did $500 580 builds cause the twin 560 Tis were 40% faster and a lot cheaper.... with the 6xx series, the performance of the 670's made them the top choice..... once word of the 780 Ti came out, with the 4200 price drop, twin 780s made great sense. The 960 just doesn't cut it the way those cards did.

And again, "use" and "benefit from" are two very different things. Max Payne 3 "uses" 2.75 MB of VRAM at 5760 and 1080 and will not even install on a 2 GB card. Put a 4GB card in, install the game, switch it for a 2 GB card and you get same fps, same detail, and same experience.

From the above link:

The GeForce GTX 960 SLI is not just undone by its own shortcomings due to a lack of perfect scaling in some games, but in being a whole $70 costlier than a single GeForce GTX 970. The GTX 960 SLI ends up offering roughly the same average performance as a single GTX 970 across resolutions. You're, hence, much better off choosing a single GTX 970 to GTX 960 SLI; that is, if you plan on buying two of these cards outright. The GTX 970 offers close to 20 percent more performance per dollar than the GTX 960 SLI in 1080p and 1440p.

It goes on to talk about how 4GB would be advantageous at higher resolutions but this card in SLI already has trouble keeping up with the cheaper 970 at lower resolutions so I fail to see how that is in any way relevant.

I think you misunderstood me. I said that buying two GTX 960 cards for SLI right now is unreasonable, agreeing with that quote. My point was that it could make sense for someone who buys a GTX 960 right now to buy a second one as an upgrade a year or two (or more, w/e) later rather than replacing the card.

I am aware of the difference between uses and benefits by in this context. There are in fact some games in which you can benefit from more than 2GB in 1080p. Well, there's at least skyrim with some heay mods. Maybe there aren't more games than that yet; I don't know. I would bet on there being several more within the next few years, which is the time frame I'm thinking about for this example.

Regarding comparisons between where the 960 stands compared to similar named models from prevous generations, I agree with you. The performance difference between it and the GTX 970 is huge, yet there is no card between them. That the GTX 970 also has roughly the same price/performance ratio is also very different from most examples of previous generations like you mentioned. Again, I'm not recommending that anyone go out and buy a pair of GTX 960s.

The GTX 970 is a much better option if you're going to spend that kind of money at one time. However, I think that if you were going to spend only enough for a GTX 960, then spending a little extra on a 4GB model because it will probably make a difference later on should you pick up a second card for cheap in a generation or two makes sense to me.

 

[blazorthon]

makes sense to me. I forgot to add that to my last sentence .

 

[photonboy]

GPU vs Memory bandwidth:

I'm not sure why this is confusing, but the GTX980 has 2X the processing elements and also 2X the memory bandwidth of the GTX960.

The GPU talks to the video memory thus the effective bandwidth has to scale the same way. It the GTX980 is doing okay then the GTX960 will be too.

So why do people think there's some issue with "only" a 128-bit bus?

 

[blazorthon]

GPU vs Memory bandwidth:

I'm not sure why this is confusing, but the GTX980 has 2X the processing elements and also 2X the memory bandwidth of the GTX960.

The GPU talks to the video memory thus the effective bandwidth has to scale the same way. It the GTX980 is doing okay then the GTX960 will be too.

So why do people think there's some issue with "only" a 128-bit bus?

2x the processing elements doesn't necessarily mean a 2x GPU performance boost. Increasing the number of processors doesn't translate to a perfect scaling. The scaling is slightly worse than the GPU frequency performance scaling.

Memory bandwidth, on the other hand, scales pretty much perfectly when you double the bus width without changing anything else. This doesn't make a big difference, but it is not entirely negligible either. Notice how the GTX 980 is not exactly 2x the performance of the GTX 960. It's closer to 85% faster, and that's with a 100% memory bandwidth advantage. Granted these aren't the only differences between the two GPUs and why they perform how they do, it's still important.

However, that's not to say I think the 128 bit bus is a big problem. I had my doubts at first, but it seems to cope well.

 

[tjgibbz]

it wont work properly as its 128 bit interface 4GB on 128bit interface = bigfail

 

[Mac266]

it wont work properly as its 128 bit interface 4GB on 128bit interface = bigfail

This comment = Big Fail

 

[blazorthon]

it wont work properly as its 128 bit interface 4GB on 128bit interface = bigfail

What would make you say that? looking at the 2GB model, it works surprisingly well with how Nvidia uses lossless compression and whatever other tricks to get it to work as wel as it does. Doubling the capacity won't make it suddenly not work anymore. Oftentimes when that memory is not needed, the card may run very slightly slower due to more RAM chips being on the same interface, but that's generally less than a 1% difference. I wouldn't call that a fail as far as not working properly because that's exactly how it should work.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

GPU vs Memory bandwidth:

I'm not sure why this is confusing, but the GTX980 has 2X the processing elements and also 2X the memory bandwidth of the GTX960.

The GPU talks to the video memory thus the effective bandwidth has to scale the same way. It the GTX980 is doing okay then the GTX960 will be too.

So why do people think there's some issue with "only" a 128-bit bus?

2x the processing elements doesn't necessarily mean a 2x GPU performance boost. Increasing the number of processors doesn't translate to a perfect scaling. The scaling is slightly worse than the GPU frequency performance scaling.

Memory bandwidth, on the other hand, scales pretty much perfectly when you double the bus width without changing anything else. This doesn't make a big difference, but it is not entirely negligible either. Notice how the GTX 980 is not exactly 2x the performance of the GTX 960. It's closer to 85% faster, and that's with a 100% memory bandwidth advantage. Granted these aren't the only differences between the two GPUs and why they perform how they do, it's still important.

However, that's not to say I think the 128 bit bus is a big problem. I had my doubts at first, but it seems to cope well.

it wont work properly as its 128 bit interface 4GB on 128bit interface = bigfail

yeah, it has nearly half the memory bandwidth of the gtx760 it replaces (and they made 4gb versions of that), yet low and behold, it is still faster at all resolutions than the 760. Maybe memory bandwidth isnt everything huh?

 

[Brian Blair]

First people complain when the card comes out that 2GB vRAM is not enough, and now they complain that 4GB is not needed only 2GB is needed because it's a 1080p card. Really? Don't become like Youtube commentors now.

No you idiot! They are not complaining now because it has 4gb!!!!!! They are complaining that it has 4GB but it does not matter! It still has a crappy 128bit bus! So it still can't use more than around 2GB of V-Ram unless it is a slow game like mincraft or skyrim with lots of texture mods! And this review has also already promoted a high price, claiming high price for premium card! Premium card my ass! All they did was slightly overclock the V-Ram, This card is probably going to be priced close to the already way overpriced 970 (compared to the R9 290 for $279, The 970 is way overpriced!) And stupid people like you will buy it!

 

[nikoli707]

video cards are for more than just gaming yo. for those running cad on a 4k display and run out of 2gb quickly, 4gb is the magic trick.

 

[Mac266]

No you idiot! They are not complaining now because it has 4gb!!!!!! They are complaining that it has 4GB but it does not matter! It still has a crappy 128bit bus! So it still can't use more than around 2GB of V-Ram unless it is a slow game like mincraft or skyrim with lots of texture mods! And this review has also already promoted a high price, claiming high price for premium card! Premium card my ass! All they did was slightly overclock the V-Ram, This card is probably going to be priced close to the already way overpriced 970 (compared to the R9 290 for $279, The 970 is way overpriced!) And stupid people like you will buy it!

"GTX 970 Way overpriced"

$50 more for quite a bit better performance.

"128 bit blah blah waaa"

Read about Maxwell Texture compression much?

 

[MisterMayhem]

Can't wait for the benchmarks!

 

[I Haz Potato]

Evga has its 4 gb card already at newegg for 239.99

 

[rwinches]

EVGA has three 960 4GB cards
including a FTW at $264 on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UOYQ9N4/ref=twister_B00UTH4YPG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Geforce GTX 960 4GB FTW,
Geforce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC
standard EVGA GTX 960 4GB

So it is time for an up to date test to verify if the extra GBs make a difference.