How does a GTX 960 2GB compare to a PS4's card?

[PastaFeast]

The 960 came out January 2015 and I got mine December of that year. It is two years old now, but it's only one rung below the the current newest 1000 series. Before I bought it I did research and it was a very well regarded card, not top of the line but also not trash and every source said it was immensely more powerful than a PS4. I haven't played a lot of games that are both PC and PS4, but the ones I have played have worked at a solid 60fps at 1080p on high settings or better and just reading the specs for other games I exceed them nearly every time.

But I see a lot of people calling the 960 trash on some RE7 forums and how it is horrifically outdated and obsolete now. Compared to the 1080 maybe there is an argument to be made, but my question is how is a 960 suddenly regarded as being so bad when it can play other PS4 era games flawlessly? RE7 is running on the same PS4 hardware that Fallout 4, SFV, DOOM are running on, so if my card can play those why is it considered a dinosaur when it comes RE7? I'm not even talking about the PS4 Pro, just the regular one. If a 960 exceeds a PS4's specs in 2015 why does it suddenly not now? If a vanilla PS4 can run RE7 without issue so should my 960 correct? I don't have the game but I'm reading about a lot of issues of it not working well not just with 960s but even some higher cards too.

I'm very happy with this card and even though going forward it'll gradually be able to play fewer games, it should at least last me until the end of this generation until the PS5-tier games start to come out, correct? If anything it seems my 8 GB of RAM seem to be the limiting factor when I look at specs instead of my card.

 

[mlga91]

You cant directly compare them, in raw power the 960 has more, but devs can get more juice of ps4 hardware, a 2GB 960 has not aged well because of the new VRAM requirements, i really doubt that it will run games well at the end of the ps4 lifespan. RE7 eats VRAM like crazy, you should wait for patches a while before buying.

 

[neatfeatguy]

The 960 came out January 2015 and I got mine December of that year. It is two years old now, but it's only one rung below the the current newest 1000 series. Before I bought it I did research and it was a very well regarded card, not top of the line but also not trash and every source said it was immensely more powerful than a PS4. I haven't played a lot of games that are both PC and PS4, but the ones I have played have worked at a solid 60fps at 1080p on high settings or better and just reading the specs for other games I exceed them nearly every time.

But I see a lot of people calling the 960 trash on some RE7 forums and how it is horrifically outdated and obsolete now. Compared to the 1080 maybe there is an argument to be made, but my question is how is a 960 suddenly regarded as being so bad when it can play other PS4 era games flawlessly? RE7 is running on the same PS4 hardware that Fallout 4, SFV, DOOM are running on, so if my card can play those why is it considered a dinosaur when it comes RE7? I'm not even talking about the PS4 Pro, just the regular one. If a 960 exceeds a PS4's specs in 2015 why does it suddenly not now? If a vanilla PS4 can run RE7 without issue so should my 960 correct? I don't have the game but I'm reading about a lot of issues of it not working well not just with 960s but even some higher cards too.

I'm very happy with this card and even though going forward it'll gradually be able to play fewer games, it should at least last me until the end of this generation until the PS5-tier games start to come out, correct? If anything it seems my 8 GB of RAM seem to be the limiting factor when I look at specs instead of my card.

PS4 (Pro) has a GTX 970 equivalent card - which is a fairly decent card for gaming on 1080p

Original PS4 has roughly a HD 7850 card in it.

The HD 7850 is close to a GTX 570.

Two GTX 570s in SLI, they lag behind a single GTX 970 by roughly 20% based on the fact I used to own two 570s and my personal benchmarks, they always lagged behind posted single GPU, GTX 970 benchmarks by 15-25%.

With all this info, I'd say that a GTX 960 falls into these areas when compared to the PS4 consoles:

GTX 960 about 50% slower than what the PS4 Pro offers.
GTX 960 is about twice the performance of an original PS4.

So, to answer your question, the GTX 960 is a more power card when compared to what the original PS4 has. However, when it comes to optimizing games on the console for known specific hardware, devs have had time to play with it and know what the system can and cannot do. They'll work on making the game run as well as it can on the console. When they port it over to the PC - it's usually not ported well. FPS limiters, poor optimization, lack of certain resolution support and all sort of glaring console to PC port issues.

While you may have a more powerful system, it doesn't mean that the game will run well on it. That falls to the developer and how well they port the game to the PC. If they port it well, it should handle just as good (if not better) on the PC over the PS4.

 

[TJ Hooker]

But I see a lot of people calling the 960 trash on some RE7 forums and how it is horrifically outdated and obsolete now. Compared to the 1080 maybe there is an argument to be made, but my question is how is a 960 suddenly regarded as being so bad when it can play other PS4 era games flawlessly? RE7 is running on the same PS4 hardware that Fallout 4, SFV, DOOM are running on, so if my card can play those why is it considered a dinosaur when it comes RE7? I'm not even talking about the PS4 Pro, just the regular one. If a 960 exceeds a PS4's specs in 2015 why does it suddenly not now? If a vanilla PS4 can run RE7 without issue so should my 960 correct? I don't have the game but I'm reading about a lot of issues of it not working well not just with 960s but even some higher cards too.

I think a lot of people assume you're aiming for at least 1080p/60fps/high settings, in which case the 960 is starting to fall short. However, there are no such restrictions on consoles, and devs can choose whatever graphics settings (and, to a lesser extent, resolution and target frame rate) to get it working on consoles. Although your card's 2GB of VRAM is a limiting factor.

 

[mlga91]

Although your card's 2GB of VRAM is a limiting factor.

In 2015 2GB was enough for 1080p, we had such a jump in those these two short years.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Yeah, it does seem like recommended VRAM really jumped recently. I bought an R9 380 late 2015, and the value of 4GB over 2GB was questionable. Now, only a little over a year later, people are debating whether 4GB is enough for 1080p...

 

[Eximo]

2GB cards became mainstream, the developers plan ahead and target that as the median GPU to run their games on release. Which means the developers that push the envelope were designing for 4GB+ cards, some of those titles are starting to release. GTX1060 / RX480 are the mi-range cards now, at 6GB and 8GB.

Also have to consider how memory is sold. Typical 2GB GDDR5 card only has 4 memory chips. Pretty soon those capacity chips will be unavailable, and they'll have to switch to 4GB total without having to design a new PCB or retool a manufacturing line. And they'll do it too, on the low end those higher memory numbers sell well.