Nvidia GeForce GTX 960: Maxwell In The Middle

[RedJaron]

128bit bus is uselss on a card even designed for 1080p.

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.

The benchmarks show otherwise. The 960 shows very respectable framerates at 1080 even with the 128-bit handicap. Go above that and you'll run into problems. As for being "no where close" to the 280, which games are you cherry picking? The scores here show the 960 and 285 trading blows If you look at scores on other sites, you'll even see a few places where the 960 meets or beats the 280X. And while the 270X is a great card for the price, the 960 is consistently faster than it by a significant margin.

My complaint is not that the 960 is a poor card, but that it's very niche and has little value outside its pigeonhole. However, since that pigeonhole is single screen FHD, and since that's the area the vast majority of gamers live, it will likely be a very profitable card for NVidia

 

[InvalidError]

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.

Newer GPU architectures manage to deliver similar or better performance using less memory bandwidth and AMD did the same thing with the R9-285 which manages to land between the R9-280 and 280X using a 256bits memory bus instead of a 384bits one. Same goes on Nvidia's side going from the 780 to 980.

Making the bus wider means needing more DRAM chips, more PCB space, more balls under the BGA, etc. All significant added-cost items. While it may not beat the GTX760 by upgrade-worthy margins, it does bring the performance price point down by $50-80 for people either upgrading from something older/slower or building new systems and power down by 50W.

 

[sarinaide]

Underwhelming is exactly what this card is, it is an attempt to use a newer technology and shrink to replicate higher performance while skimping on a lot of necessary components. The torture load test being only 15w off and aging 285X architecture is not impressive together with generally equal performance is a bit of a worry when AMD does release its new generation cards. This card will find itself outclassed very quickly. While AMD's stall is a bit frustrating to competition, they now have the advantage of knowing Nvidias hardline for high end and low end.

I get also annoyed at the OC issue, overclocking a GPU is the exact same thing as hotting up a car, you pay more for negligible gains while running the risk of seizing up not just the engine but other parts as well through the increased stress.

 

[-Fran-]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQE6p5r1tYE

Nice bug nVidia. I wonder if the 960 has it as well.

Cheers!

 

[Novuake]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQE6p5r1tYE

Nice bug nVidia. I wonder if the 960 has it as well.

Cheers!

How is this relevant exactly?

 

[meat_loaf]

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.

Newer GPU architectures manage to deliver similar or better performance using less memory bandwidth and AMD did the same thing with the R9-285 which manages to land between the R9-280 and 280X using a 256bits memory bus instead of a 384bits one. Same goes on Nvidia's side going from the 780 to 980.

Making the bus wider means needing more DRAM chips, more PCB space, more balls under the BGA, etc. All significant added-cost items. While it may not beat the GTX760 by upgrade-worthy margins, it does bring the performance price point down by $50-80 for people either upgrading from something older/slower or building new systems and power down by 50W.

You're not seeing the problem. Making the bus wider does not require more DRAM chips. If you take a look at the R9 270 it has 256bit and has similar amount of DRAM chips as R9 280 (with 280 having 2-3 more for the fact its a 3gb card). The design certainly isnt a problem either. If Gigabyte can redesign the entire GTX 760 to fit in their tiny BRIX series the bus is definitely not the issue.

R9 280X does not need 384bit bus because 256bit is more than enough for that performance level. Since GTX 780ti only has 384bit it doesnt even saturate the entire 384bit memory bandwidth. AMD added more cause thats how they designed it since the HD 7970 series. R9 285 is a new design for the PCB implementing all the R9 290 features into the chip which HD 7970 didn't have.

Second it does not make sense to put 128bit lane regardless how efficient and new the gpu is because that memory bandwidth will eventually limit intensive games like Shadow of Mordor when it eats that memory for rendering the frames. Its not an impressive card at this price point considering you can find R9 290 being $50 more and R9 280 being cheaper and is at least 3+ yrs old on the architecture. Yet still manage to out perform every single aspect of the "highly praised" Maxwell performance as seen on 970. If the 970 performance equates R9 290 the 960 should at least gets close to 770 but falls short in every aspect.

It doesn't make sense to put 128bit on a 960 when its suppose to replace the 760. 750ti with 128bit makes sense as it meant to play games that doesn't require heavy gpu calculations. If you go look at the popular reviewers anantech and Linus, they all conclude that having 128bit is extremely disappointing for 960 and could see problems limiting its actual potential in certain cases.

 

[meat_loaf]

128bit bus is uselss on a card even designed for 1080p.

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.

The benchmarks show otherwise. The 960 shows very respectable framerates at 1080 even with the 128-bit handicap. Go above that and you'll run into problems. As for being "no where close" to the 280, which games are you cherry picking? The scores here show the 960 and 285 trading blows If you look at scores on other sites, you'll even see a few places where the 960 meets or beats the 280X. And while the 270X is a great card for the price, the 960 is consistently faster than it by a significant margin.

My complaint is not that the 960 is a poor card, but that it's very niche and has little value outside its pigeonhole. However, since that pigeonhole is single screen FHD, and since that's the area the vast majority of gamers live, it will likely be a very profitable card for NVidia

Benchmarks differ between different builds, look at Linus and Anandtech of the GTX 960, same games but with different FPS results. Linus's test with his 960 only showed 2/5 games where the 960 was close to R9 285 performance due to optimized games for nvidia, but in the other 3 the performance was relative to R9 270. Benchmarks can only be used as a tool, I only look at real performance of the card in a system while running games. Same thing with 3d mark and what not, those scores a meaningless if they don't put a relevance to the numbers. Its all relative base on what your system is running. Benchmarks are also affected by several factors people forget: 1) silicon lottery, 2) manufacturer PCB design, 3) VRAM being used (mostly Elpida, but I have seen AMD and Nvidia cards use Samsung), 4) software implentation (but that doesn't solve hardware limits regardless how optimize softwares are).

But it cannot be denied regardless how the GPU architecture is newer, 128bit bus is a problem for certain games that require extended use of VRAM allocation. Shadow of Mordor is a prime example of that and we can only expect to see more games to be designed that way. GTA 4 was already an example for last gen cards when it recalls and stores so much objects for rendering into the memory, and its worse with ENB other mods. I expect no less from GTA 5 to be the same.

Lastly, its definitely not a budget build at that price point. You can find R9 270 giving you excellent performance at 1080p for cheap, when R9 280 is priced at the same point (sometimes even cheaper) as 960. Nvidia isn't creating a new card to show its performance, what Nvidia is doing is going down the exact road it went with Titan when it advertised it as gaming card.

 

[HomerThompson]

This review is retarded. Look elsewhere on newegg for 970 performance at $240 with an Asus DirectCU II R9 290.

 

[InvalidError]

It doesn't make sense to put 128bit on a 960 when its suppose to replace the 760. 750ti with 128bit makes sense as it meant to play games that doesn't require heavy gpu calculations.

Truly compute-intensive code requires raw horsepower and may not necessarily require high RAM bandwidth. Example: bitcoin mining. The GTX960 is perfectly adequate for compute-intensive shaders, CUDA, OpenCL, DirectCompute, etc.

It might not fare as well in bandwidth-intensive scenarios but in most cases, developers have ways to avoid depending on memory bandwidth too much if they can be bothered to make the optimization effort.

And I think it is worth keeping in mind that the GTX960 is intended to be priced $50 (20%) lower than the GTX760.

 

[-Fran-]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQE6p5r1tYE

Nice bug nVidia. I wonder if the 960 has it as well.

Cheers!

How is this relevant exactly?

Well... nVidia -> Maxwell -> 660 and 560ti had it as well (from what I've read).

Like I said: it's worth checking.

Cheers!

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

Personally I would just get a 280 for this price point.

 

[meat_loaf]

It doesn't make sense to put 128bit on a 960 when its suppose to replace the 760. 750ti with 128bit makes sense as it meant to play games that doesn't require heavy gpu calculations.

Truly compute-intensive code requires raw horsepower and may not necessarily require high RAM bandwidth. Example: bitcoin mining. The GTX960 is perfectly adequate for compute-intensive shaders, CUDA, OpenCL, DirectCompute, etc.

It might not fare as well in bandwidth-intensive scenarios but in most cases, developers have ways to avoid depending on memory bandwidth too much if they can be bothered to make the optimization effort.

And I think it is worth keeping in mind that the GTX960 is intended to be priced $50 (20%) lower than the GTX760.

You dont use any nvidia cards for bitcoin mining, its highly useless. Based on truly-computational codes, AMD cards run better than Nvidia. This fact is already proven when users use AMD cards over nvidia in bit coin mining.

Your argument about developers avoiding using memory bandwidth is a total crap shoot of an argument. Developers are lazy and they do not bother about optimizations over profits. Triple A titles releases are becoming more and more buggy on release date. Also its proven 128bit is problematic at this calibre of gpus. Linus did a test with Asus Strix 960 on 4k in WoW. It actually significantly less fps even against R9 270. Even if both cards are not meant for 4k, you can see it is a bottleneck. More and more games today will significantly start using more effective memory as object mesh, tesselation, and textures becomes more dense for crisper image. Games like Shadow of Mordor, Witcher, GTA 5 will become a problem.

At this price point, which I doubt nvidia will even lower the price, its not worth the buy regardless if its cheaper than 760. When you can find R9 280X selling for less, and at the same price of 760 you can actually buy R9 290 which destroys 960 and gives you 970 performance.

 

[meat_loaf]

This review is retarded. Look elsewhere on newegg for 970 performance at $240 with an Asus DirectCU II R9 290.

This review is retarded because Toms purposely left out R9 280 because it knows it destroys this card at the same price point. Obviously something like that can't be put on reviews...(sarcasm).

 

[synge]

Seems an alright card for what it is. Like others, I'm kind of disappointed but for $199 I can't complain all that much. Nvidia obviously designed this card to be cheap to manufacture so hopefully we'll be seeing some nice price cuts to the 960 in the not too distant future. The 960ti should be an interesting product. If it comes out as a 192 bit card with 3gb at $249 it should be quite the hit. As for me, I think I'll be holding onto my 670, which this 960 appears to be perform pretty similarly to. The 970 looks like a nice upgrade, but isn't really worth the price of admission when my 670 already does most of what I want it to. Looks like I'll be sitting out this generation and until at least Pascal in 2016/17.

 

[refillable]

I am in two minds with this card. In one side I am very impressed with the power figures that nvidia now leads in the efficiency world as AMD dominated them just a couple years back (Northern Islands vs Fermi), but this can somehow change when AMD starts churning out their next gen card. However I am also a bit disappointed that the performance figures doesn't justify the excellent power figures. Just paying ~$30 you can get the full 280X which stomps this card right away and it still trades blow with the 285 at 1080p and gets slightly slower in higher resolution. I was hoping that it will touch the 280X but I was wrong. BUT, I do not care how would you argue with my statement but I think this is the time that mid range cards now can play 1440p very well. Although not a popular resolution, I think Tomshardware should show 1440p benchies too, but as of now I predict that 1440p performance on these cards will not be that different from 4K.

 

[CTurbo]

Unless efficiency is more important than performance, I cannot imagine recommending the 960 over the 280/280x. I'm disappointed. The 280x can often be found for $199.

 

[nikoli707]

I always find it annoying GPU reviews only compare CURRENT generation cards. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but how many people on CURRENT generation GPUs are even looking to upgrade? Wouldn't it make sense to stack these things against at least some previous gen boards (e.g. HD7950 etc) to give those on older GPUS an idea where they fit in on the performance curve?

This review is retarded. Look elsewhere on newegg for 970 performance at $240 with an Asus DirectCU II R9 290.

This review is retarded because Toms purposely left out R9 280 because it knows it destroys this card at the same price point. Obviously something like that can't be put on reviews...(sarcasm).

the r9-285 is the same card.

 

[mapesdhs]

... I actually now 'need' a replacement for a 5850 (I am a 'careful' user). ...

Just curious, how much faster than a 5850 do you want a new card to be? And what is your CPU/mbd atm?

Ian.

 

[CaptainTom]

128bit bus is uselss on a card even designed for 1080p.

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.

The benchmarks show otherwise. The 960 shows very respectable framerates at 1080 even with the 128-bit handicap. Go above that and you'll run into problems. As for being "no where close" to the 280, which games are you cherry picking? The scores here show the 960 and 285 trading blows If you look at scores on other sites, you'll even see a few places where the 960 meets or beats the 280X. And while the 270X is a great card for the price, the 960 is consistently faster than it by a significant margin.

My complaint is not that the 960 is a poor card, but that it's very niche and has little value outside its pigeonhole. However, since that pigeonhole is single screen FHD, and since that's the area the vast majority of gamers live, it will likely be a very profitable card for NVidia

But you can get a 270X 4GB for $200, which is worth the 10% drop in performance.

 

[InvalidError]

But you can get a 270X 4GB for $200, which is worth the 10% drop in performance.

Not many games will make much use of more than 2GB RAM on a GPU with only a 256bits memory controller since most memory usage beyond the first 800MB is just resource duplication across channels. That's why almost nobody bothered making 4GB R9-270s.

A 3GB R9-280 would be a much better deal and there are some around $200 too... at least if you do not mind blowing nearly 300W on the GPU.

 

[Nossy]

bleh. Was going to buy it, but the 128bit is a turn off. In some benchmarks two of these in SLI can't even touch the 970. Might as well bite the bullet and get the 970 GTX. Really Nvidia?

 

[logainofhades]

Underwhelming is exactly what this card is, it is an attempt to use a newer technology and shrink to replicate higher performance while skimping on a lot of necessary components. The torture load test being only 15w off and aging 285X architecture is not impressive together with generally equal performance is a bit of a worry when AMD does release its new generation cards. This card will find itself outclassed very quickly. While AMD's stall is a bit frustrating to competition, they now have the advantage of knowing Nvidias hardline for high end and low end.

I get also annoyed at the OC issue, overclocking a GPU is the exact same thing as hotting up a car, you pay more for negligible gains while running the risk of seizing up not just the engine but other parts as well through the increased stress.

Your car analogy isn't accurate, at all. Old school mods, like gasket matching, intake, heads, and exhaust give noticeable gains, for very little money, and do not induce any extra stress. Forced induction can induce stress, but those gains are even more noticeable, unless you think 100+ Hp/Ft LB is negligible. Might want to stick to pc talk there.

 

[Eggz]

[O]verclocking a GPU is the exact same thing as hotting up a car . . .

Your car analogy isn't accurate . . . Might want to stick to pc talk there.

What's a car?

 

[cmi86]

I always find it annoying GPU reviews only compare CURRENT generation cards. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but how many people on CURRENT generation GPUs are even looking to upgrade? Wouldn't it make sense to stack these things against at least some previous gen boards (e.g. HD7950 etc) to give those on older GPUS an idea where they fit in on the performance curve?

This review is retarded. Look elsewhere on newegg for 970 performance at $240 with an Asus DirectCU II R9 290.

This review is retarded because Toms purposely left out R9 280 because it knows it destroys this card at the same price point. Obviously something like that can't be put on reviews...(sarcasm).

the r9-285 is the same card.

No it is not.
It may employ the same core GPU but die is different and the PCB is also different along with everything on it. It is also $50 more than a 280 and ever so slightly slower.

 

[Beebstar]

Thank you! The new 2015 Performance Charts are great! I've looked forward to them a long time.

Only one thing, I would still like to see a benchmark that uses a lesser CPU and a lower resolution than 1080p. Several of our monitors and many of our games do not support that high of resolution, and I only have one i5 in the house. Most gamers (kids) use a middle-of-the-road laptop.

Keep up the good work!

Joe B.