Nvidia GeForce GTX 960: Maxwell In The Middle

[FormatC]

So... during gaming GTX980 power consumption is between a 570 & 580 & above 680 & 770? 970 is above 560ti? lol Looks like it is not really low power usage at all. 960 have real power rating... while 970/980 have fake power rating. Nvidia is cheating here...

Why? The power consumption of the 960 OC cards is between 90 and 110 watts in gaming. In comparison with the performance it is very similar to the 970 OC. I have here a very good sample of an 980 OC with real measured 174 watts @1.4 GHz boost in the same gaming loop. THIS is impressive but this quality is very rare (ok, it's handpicked).

 

[FormatC]

Anyway - when asking about other Strixes I meant measuring other versions of Maxwell: 970/980 Strix. In review ( http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-12.html ) there is only such data for Gigabyte versions, and they are below 75W. I wonder if "bigger" Strix have same problem, but if they are not included in review, they were not measured?

I wrote a very large Maxwell roundup with 15(!) cards which was unfortunately not translated from German, I don't know why. But here is the link to all measured cards:
http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-gtx-980-roundup-vergleichstest,testberichte-241658-20.html

Not one card exceeded the 75 watts limit so extreme as this small 960 Strix. Just looked into my loogs and raw data - nothing. But if you remember - I've mentioned the same high spikes on a GTX 750 Ti from Asus.

Sorry for the double post. Please repair the edit function...

 

[Thomas Serruques]

The chip overclocks very well, too bad there are no OC benchmarcks in this review

 

[jrizzz]

Umm, I don't think Arma 3 has mantle support lol. Anyways, glad to see the 280x in the benchmarks.

 

[logainofhades]

I thought of another use for this card. Much like the GTX 750ti, this would be good for many OEM rigs. Many i5 and FX equipped systems have a 400-450w PSU. The GTX 960, with its 400w PSU requirement, would be a good fit for such systems. That mini-itx, gigabyte model, in particular, would be great for an OEM equipped with like this.

 

[TripleHeinz]

I still believe that the 750 Ti was the most interesting Maxwell based card at launch.

 

[Roby Whatthe]

Shame on you nvidia. 1K PLN for this card. LOL

 

[logainofhades]

I still believe that the 750 Ti was the most interesting Maxwell based card at launch.

I agree that the 750ti was the most interesting, as it opened up a lot of gaming potential to those with OEM rigs. They no longer had to settle for an HD 7750, or had to get a PSU and a GPU upgrade. The GTX 970 was very interesting as well, as it uses far less power than most R9 series graphics cards, while outperforming them, save the 290x, all while using less power. You no longer had to buy a super expensive PSU, to get a powerful gaming rig. An evga 500b can easily handle a non overclocking Intel/single 970 rigs. A 600b for FX and overclocking Intel, with a single 970 is good. A quality 750w, like the B2 series, can handle any of those setups, in SLI. No need for huge PSU's for the most common configurations.

 

[filippi]

I still believe that the 750 Ti was the most interesting Maxwell based card at launch.

I agree that the 750ti was the most interesting, as it opened up a lot of gaming potential to those with OEM rigs. They no longer had to settle for an HD 7750, or had to get a PSU and a GPU upgrade. The GTX 970 was very interesting as well, as it uses far less power than most R9 series graphics cards, while outperforming them, save the 290x, all while using less power. You no longer had to buy a super expensive PSU, to get a powerful gaming rig. An evga 500b can easily handle a non overclocking Intel/single 970 rigs. A 600b for FX and overclocking Intel, with a single 970 is good. A quality 750w, like the B2 series, can handle any of those setups, in SLI. No need for huge PSU's for the most common configurations.

That's a good point. I think we expected to much from each Maxwell release...

 

[hapkiman]

I am a little underwhelmed by the GTX 960 offering and its low memory bus. Hopefully the Ti version or even the GTX 965 will be a little more impressive. The 960 seems like barely a "tick" improvement over the 760, and I'm not sure I'd choose it over a R9 285 which sells for $200. Even a 280x can be found on NewEgg for around $230 nowadays. And it handily beats the 960.

 

[Mr Gamer]

ty

 

[94_xj]

Big price and performance gap for a 960ti. I'll predict same number of shaders, 192bit memory bus, maybe a gpu overclock at $250.

 

[logainofhades]

Big price and performance gap for a 960ti. I'll predict same number of shaders, 192bit memory bus, maybe a gpu overclock at $250.

Read my post earlier, about supposed GTX 960ti variants. Not sure how legit the story is, but it is all I have really seen so far.

 

[-Fran-]

I'd love to see an HEVC article for this card. I know there are little to none H.265 stuff out there, but you guys could toy around with Virtual Dub Mod and some other proprietary video encoders our there.

I *really* need to know how this card behaves for HTPC tasks. The theory is good and all, but software rendering after decoding is the current way to go for great quality (madVR).

Cheers!

 

[nikoli707]

i see a half height 6.7" 960 listed. for those needing a mini itx build, it is impressive.

 

[Cash091]

This is pretty damn close to the 770 in gaming benches. For $200, this is an awesome card. The benches do prove that the card isn't crippled by the 128-bit bus, but I still think I'm leaning toward a pair of 970's.

 

[steve4king]

I'm excited about MFAA. Those of you that remember VHS will also remember that a face from a single frame from a VHS source was hardly distinguishable as a face. It required at least three frames for us to get the impression of a clear image. This idea doesn't work well with compressed video, but as rendered images, MFAA proves that it works pretty well. based on what we're seeing from MFAA, I think there's still a lot of room for improvement as the technology matures.

 

[RedJaron]

This really is a head-scratcher. I have a hard time getting over the 128-bit bus. Yes, proper compression helps with the limited bandwidth, but there are still limits. I may be wrong, but that seems like it's handicapping itself in more rigorous workloads. And doesn't this also impact SLI? I mean, if a normal 256- or 384-bit GPU can't handle 1440 or triple screens, it's because the processor is at its limit, not because the memory pipe is stressed, right? So you add the second GPU for the extra horsepower to use the memory pipe more fully. But adding a second 960 seems like turbocharging an engine while still sucking fuel through a 128-bit straw ( and only 2GB of VRAM at that. ) And even if they do make a 4GB version, will the 128-bit bus be enough to properly use it? And what's the over/under the Ti version is 192-bit instead of 256?

My guess is that this was designed to be a great 1080 card but no more. A lot of higher-end cards end up in that grey area where they're overkill for 1080, but they're not quite enough on their own for more. So you sometimes feel like you overpaid for a card that's not getting utilized. The 960 doesn't feel that way to me. It feels like NVidia is saying, "Spend ~$200 and enjoy anything you want on a a single FHD display." That's not a bad thing, but the 960 doesn't seem to have anywhere else to go. It's good enough for FHD now, but how long will that last? At least those grey area cards you spent a little extra on can use that extra graphical power as games get more demanding

Don, I would've liked to seen some resolutions between 1080 and 4K shown here, like 1440p, triple 1080p, and maybe even 2560x1080. Were the monitors not available, or was this due to time constraints?

 

[meat_loaf]

GTX 960 is a failure of a card. 128bit bus on a 2gb vram card is a joke. Give it at least what 760 has @ 192bit. Second the pricing in the US only is around $220, you can get R9 280 for less. The global pricing for 960 is retarded, since its matched at $300 USD.

Nvidia wore their Titan shoes again.

 

[meat_loaf]

This really is a head-scratcher. I have a hard time getting over the 128-bit bus. Yes, proper compression helps with the limited bandwidth, but there are still limits. I may be wrong, but that seems like it's handicapping itself in more rigorous workloads. And doesn't this also impact SLI? I mean, if a normal 256- or 384-bit GPU can't handle 1440 or triple screens, it's because the processor is at its limit, not because the memory pipe is stressed, right? So you add the second GPU for the extra horsepower to use the memory pipe more fully. But adding a second 960 seems like turbocharging an engine while still sucking fuel through a 128-bit straw ( and only 2GB of VRAM at that. ) And even if they do make a 4GB version, will the 128-bit bus be enough to properly use it? And what's the over/under the Ti version is 192-bit instead of 256?

My guess is that this was designed to be a great 1080 card but no more. A lot of higher-end cards end up in that grey area where they're overkill for 1080, but they're not quite enough on their own for more. So you sometimes feel like you overpaid for a card that's not getting utilized. The 960 doesn't feel that way to me. It feels like NVidia is saying, "Spend ~$200 and enjoy anything you want on a a single FHD display." That's not a bad thing, but the 960 doesn't seem to have anywhere else to go. It's good enough for FHD now, but how long will that last? At least those grey area cards you spent a little extra on can use that extra graphical power as games get more demanding

Don, I would've liked to seen some resolutions between 1080 and 4K shown here, like 1440p, triple 1080p, and maybe even 2560x1080. Were the monitors not available, or was this due to time constraints?

128bit bus is uselss on a card even designed for 1080p. If we look at R9 270 which as 256bit, it full uses all the chip's potential, but 128bit can be a huge problem if you are playing graphical intensive games. Especially when you need AA, that will cripple your memory buffering speed.

Besides there are other 1080p cards performs well given the price, like R9 270X. The 960 is priced if it was a competitor to R9 280, but the peformance is no where close.

 

[nikoli707]

GTX 960 is a failure of a card. 128bit bus on a 2gb vram card is a joke. Give it at least what 760 has @ 192bit. Second the pricing in the US only is around $220, you can get R9 280 for less. The global pricing for 960 is retarded, since its matched at $300 USD.

Nvidia wore their Titan shoes again.

its fine for 1080p medium settings and thats the segment its aimed at. in a year it will be a $125 card in multiple half height mini itx designs. its made to be a console killer htpc card and that is exactly what it is.

 

[meat_loaf]

GTX 960 is a failure of a card. 128bit bus on a 2gb vram card is a joke. Give it at least what 760 has @ 192bit. Second the pricing in the US only is around $220, you can get R9 280 for less. The global pricing for 960 is retarded, since its matched at $300 USD.

Nvidia wore their Titan shoes again.

its fine for 1080p medium settings and thats the segment its aimed at. in a year it will be a $125 card in multiple half height mini itx designs. its made to be a console killer htpc card and that is exactly what it is.

I dont think its aimed for HTPC at all, you could get R9 260 or 750ti for that. As for console killer, R9 270 would do very well considering its much cheaper than 960. If its aimed at 1080p medium settings for $200 is a bad deal. Since my R9 270 can play 1080p games on high/ultra and still above 40fps and its at least $60-70 cheaper.

People expected the card to perform better than 760 but in most cases its only slightly better with few fps, otherwise it doesnt give impressive performance. I don't think it will be $125 a year later, Nvidia is not a company known for reducing prices like AMD is. But honestly at that price, R9 280 makes more sense than 960.

 

[Koushik Majumder]

Make a 4gb VRAM version/

 

[meat_loaf]

Make a 4gb VRAM version/

4gb is pointless if the bus is only 128bit. If you are going to use 4gb at least have 256bit like 970 has.

 

[rdc85]

OOT: will Tom's do some review/research about some issue about 970 can only optimize 3.5 Gb VRAM from 4Gb avail..

This maybe a good reference for testing (benchmark) GPU in future...