My brand new Budget powerhouse graphics card, the GTX 960.

[Mellow]

so, as some of you poeple know, i got a new graphics card, one of the very latest NVIDIA cards.

and decided to show it to you guys, and talk a bit about it, for whoever would consider buying one themselfs.

First off, here are the specs of the GTX 960 themself:

DirectX 12 & G-Sync & OpenGL 4.4 support
Overclocked out of the box to 1279 Mhz
2GB GDDR5 Video memory
1x HDMI, 3x DP, 1x DVI-D and 1x DVI-I
3 6 MM heatpipes in direct contact with the GPU that cross-over
2x Windforce anti-turbulence inclined fans that only start spinning when the GPU reaches a certian temperature.

So far, this graphics card has proven itself already in my eyes, and is certianly not a bad chose for it's money, in fact, it's currently the best deal on the market right now for everyone that is looking for a new graphics card that can handle games well enough + you are directX 12 proof when it hits together with windows 10, as the GTX 960,970 and 980 will utilize it to the fullest potential.

I'm currently in the progress of testing a few games with the card, including DayZ, and here are the first benchmarks:

Dayz: 30-50 FPS (depending on where you are, it can jump up to 60-70 FPS)
Settings: high to very high, SMAA on very high, AA on high + alpha to coverage on highest aswell, no post-process and the other setting.

Arma 3: 35-45 FPS
Settings: Everything on High/Very High, SMAA on High/Very High, AA on 4x.

I will test more games in the near future to see how they run on the GTX 960, and post the results here, you guys can also always request me to benchmark a specific game on specific settings, if that is within my power to do it.

This is my computer i tested it on:

Intel Core I5-2500 @ 3.3Ghz (turbo speed up to 3.70Ghz)
Nvidia Geforce GTX 960
4GB DDR3 1333 Mhz RAM

*note: benchmarking can differ from system to system, and those benchmarks i have, might not be accurate on your system with the same card.

Keep your eyes open to find out more about this new powerhouse!

 

[RivaCom]

Congrats on the new card. However I don't want to burst your bubble, but figured knowledge is power. So if you don't know, Nvidia's naming scheme hasn't changed in years. They went with the 460,560,660,760,860 and now the 960. Out of all of those, the only real powerhouse that was developed was the 660 and only because they made a "newer" revision of the original. So you will see the TI versions and V2 out there. However most of the other cards like the 460, 760 and now the 960 are on the low-medium side in terms of Power. Don't get me wrong, it's usually a great budget card for PC users and teh games your playing are not very good Test games. I would try something that uses correct optimizations, Arma3/Dayz are not them. So on the Nvidia spectrum, if your looking at power. 960 is in the low-medium range, 970 is on the Medium and sometimes medium-high range. And the 980 and 990 are the high end and ultra range. However like everything, each series of these have various prices so unless you have sparing cash sitting around, it's smarter to not go full blown.

Congrats on the new card.

 

[Mellow]

Hello Rivacom,

Thanks for the responds, however, i will have to give you wrong here on 1 thing.

the GTX 960 is actually a mid-range card, the GTX 970 a mid to high range, and the GTX 980 is the high end card.

The GTX 960 compared to at the moment AMD's best mid range card, the R9 280X, are very slim in terms of FPS, and we are talking about only about 7-8 FPS difference here at max, in the video i will post, you will even see the GTX 960 beating the R9 280X in certain benchmarks.

and at the moment, i even recommend getting the GTX 960 over AMD's R9 280X, that still costs over 300€ in my country. (have the R9 280X box on my shelf with the price on it)

For 219€, and only a slight loss in FPS compared to the R9 280X, this card i'd say it the sweet spot.

video is right here.

Mellow

 

[Bootscrapper]

I just swapped out my R9 280x for the Asus GTX 970. so far i am loving it it is much better overall than the 280x was power consumption temperature and performance so i can definitely see how the GTX 960 would be on par with the 280x. don't get me wrong i was very happy with the 280x. honestly the main reason that i swapped was i was tired of seeing (NVIDIA the way it's meant to be played) on all my games and not having an NVIDIA card. haha pretty trivial i know, but sometimes stupid things like that really bug me over time.

 

[RivaCom]

I think there is a slight misunderstanding. First, I wouldn't even bring AMD/ATI into the picture as the price/performance isn't any good anymore. 1-2 years ago, ATI held the top price per performance, which is why they sold so many cards. For example, my choices for cards were a 270x for 230 usd or a 760 for 500 dollars. It just didn't make sense at the time. During the expansion into the 900 series, they learned that price matters and lowered the cost of the 960/970 by a lot.

Second, I wasn't saying the 960 wasn't a great card or was I comparing it to the world of other video cards, I was comparing it to the range of Nvidia gaming cards so you have.

• 980 - Best
• 990 or titan Z - Better
• 970 - Good
• 960 - Ok (or bottom of the Nvidia chain) This is also the newest Nvidia card so it's more up to date then the rest of the family.

However that doesn't rule out that this is a awesome card. The only thing I would of done was look for a 4 GB version.

 

[Mellow]

Hey riva,

i sure do understand your point, and i also owned a GTX 660 back in the day. (which was around the same price as the GTX 960 now)

However, so far i'm not aware that there is a GTX 960 with 4GB GDDR5, as i think there isn't, the MSI, second Gigabyte version (with 3 fans) and the ASUS strix version all have 2GB GDDR5, don't know about the EVGA version etc, if there even are versions of those.

I think 2GB is the highest you will get with a GTX 960, maybe a 3GB version is out there, and maybe the GTX 960 TI will have it, if there will be one.

 

[RivaCom]

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-...ls-launch-march-2015-adopt-hefty-price-range/ =)

 

[Mellow]

here is the first benchmark of a real game:

Tomb Raider 2013:
35-70 FPS

Settings:
almost Everything maxed out, FXAA, TressFX enabled, 8x anisotropic.

TressFX is a setting where lara her hair is realisticly rendered, and where every hair on her head moves etc, this is one of the heavy FPS draining settings in the game. picture shown below.

i was actually suprised how well the game ran, even though i did not have a constant 60 FPS.

In the area i'm standing, FPS stayed around 40-55 FPS at all times.

 

[RivaCom]

With most games I think it's like you don't know the difference in FPS under 24 FPS, But your eye can notice sutters which can result in Framerate spikes. So 40-55fps is pretty good.

 

[Mellow]

This time took my GTX 960 in some of the Unigine benchmark tools, and got some impressive results.

the Heaven and tropico results need to be redone.

the valley one i do still have:

with a average of 52 frames, on those settings in such a open world i was really suprised.