GeForce GTX 960 for beow 1080p

xXCrossfireXx

Reputable
Jan 16, 2016
869
0
5,160
Hey, so my friend is planning on getting a GeForce GTX 960 for the build I'm making him. I asked him about the resolution of his monitor, and he told me it was worse than his 1080p TV. He told me he wanted to play high settings on games, smooth 60 FPS. Now I know the 960 is more of a mid range 1080p card, but would it be overkill for his new computer?
 
Solution
Nah, it should work just fine for 720p (if he actually got 720p). You will be able to max out any game at that resolution. 950 would be better for that res.
It will be overkill. A 950 would do perfectly. The problem lies here. If in one year he decides to upgrade to 1440p, he will have problems and blame you for it. If his budget allows for a gtx 960, get it by all means.
 
It may not be 720p, it could be 1366x768(cheap monitors at that resolution are most common), 1440x900(my old monitor's resolution), 1600x900(my brother has a 32" TV at that resolution).


Whichever card you decide to go for, get atleast 4GB of memory. The 960 4GB is pretty cheap, only $20 more than the 2GB variant. The 2GB memory is now a bottleneck for many games. A further $130 will get you the 970.
 


I got the gtx 760 4gb. 😛 Yes. It was a bad mistake.

I heard there will be 4gb 950s in the future.
 
Why is everybody talking about NVIDIA. If you want something better for the price, go with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202183&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

It's a R9 380X - much more powerful than 960 for a little bit. COmes with a backplate and AMD is working on their drivers now. Should be good even if you want to get to 1080p.
 


I got the 380X. The only thing about it is the massive power consumption, I gave my friend a great deal — a case and PSU for 60 bucks, good ones too. The thing is though, the power supply is only 500W and has one 6 pin PCIe connector, so it'd be pretty much impossible since the 380X needs 2 six pins. And the 970 is way out of budget, so it's really between the 950 and 960
 


agreed. everytime someone mentions the 960 i will always bring up the 380/380x to get them interested in a better buy for their dollar. im sure he will end up getting a new monitor/tv so i would recommend him getting a 380 at minimum just to be sure that he will be happy with his system when he upgrades to a higher res monitor and depending on how much he knows about how all this works, he may end up blaming you if it doesnt perform as well as he thought on a higher res monitor/tv
 


Thanks, I'll ask him. I saw in another answer though that the card itself will bottleneck 4 GB, making it useless on the card, so only 2 gigs is useful. Is this correct? Also if it helps, my friend is aiming towards high settings, not ultra
 


Yes, that is mostly correct. Only in games like the latest Assassin's Creeds and a couple others, the 4GB actually helps but yes, in most games, 4GB over 2GB (only in GTX 960's case due to its 128-bit bus), the 4GB GTX 960 is almost useless.

The difference in price is marginal so if you can, go with the 4GB one.
 


OK, but my friend literally bought my case and PSU off of me to save himself 10 bucks, so if it helps to know, he'll be playing CSGO, Counter strike source, Half Life 2, and GMod, stuff around that area.
 


Is that all he plays? At below 1080p resolution? In that case even GT 730 will be enough.

But if you are talking about highly demanding games, then I don't see why GTX 960 2GB wouldn't work well.
 


He may play higher demanding games, so I think the GTX 960 will be good for him. Thanks for the time btw