Introduction
The GPU sweet spot. That's how Nvidia is referring to its new mid-range Maxwell card, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960.
The bare minimum. That's how we're going to be referring to it.
Nvidia has released the GeForce GTX 960 as the necessary replacement for the last remaining Kepler-based graphics card in its current GPU stack, the GTX 760.
With the first-gen GTX 750 and 750 Ti cards completing the low-end, and the GTX 970 and GTX 980 rocking the high-performance world, the Maxwell stack is now pretty much feature-complete.
We're still waiting on ultra-enthusiast cards to tip up later in the year to spoil the expected next high-end AMD Radeon launch, but for the consumer segment this is pretty much your lot for the foreseeable.
And this EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC is one of the fastest versions of Nvidia's new card around.
Though we still can't help but feel a little underwhelmed.
We've already got graphics cards around this same price point with a similar level of PC gaming performance. The game hasn't really been pushed forward and that's a mite disappointing.
That's not to say the new GeForce GTX 960 isn't a worthwhile card for the PC gaming crowd, but it's only really going to be of interest to those looking to upgrade from two or three year old cards.
And, to be fair, Nvidia has been pretty upfront about this, stating that it's not really expecting people to upgrade from the GTX 760 and is actually looking to the two out of three PC gamers which it reckons is still running a GTX 660 card, or older.
So, what have we got then?
Nvidia has created a 'virtual reference design' for the GTX 960 which means manufacturers have free reign putting their own cards together and almost means there's no real base spec for the new card.
That in turn means the first flush of GTX 960s us reviewers see will be the overclocked versions right from the off.
So it has fallen for us, with this GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC from EVGA and a STRIX OC Edition from Asus.
Performance
While the clock speeds are more widespread than usual, thanks to both a lack of Nvidia-led reference card limitations and the variance of boost clocks, the core specifications of the new GM 206 GPU are set in stone.
This mid-range Maxwell chip has a total of eight SMMs which gives the GTX 960 a full 1,024 CUDA cores, 64 texture units and 32 ROPs.
That's actually a little below the ol' GTX 760, which seems to have been a bit of an anomaly, using as it did the same GK 104 Kepler GPU as the top consumer SKUs rather than the second-tier GPU the GTX 660 and GTX 560 used.
That does though add to the general feeling the GTX 960 is a bit of a sideways step for the mid-range.
Not doing anything to dispel that feeling is its memory architecture.
Using a 128-bit memory bus for its 2GB of GDDR5 memory just seems like MechaScrooge territory. Nvidia's practised response is the GM 206 GPU uses the same improved memory compression techniques which made the GTX 980's 256-bit memory bus so effective.
Looking at the raw numbers though doesn't make for great reading on that front.
The memory bandwidth of the GTX 960 is a rather miserly 112GB/s, though Nvidia's memory compression wizardry puts that at an effective 149GB/s. Still, that's way short of the GTX 760's 192GB/s memory bandwidth or the AMD Radeon R9 285's 179GB/s on its 256-bit memory bus.
The GeForce GTX 960 is probably a mid-range stunner in terms of gaming performance though, right?
If that's what you've picked up from the tone of the review so far you probably need to have a word with your intuition. The difference between a stock-clocked GTX 970 and this SuperSC EVGA card is around 25-35% lower in the GTX 960's gaming benchmarks. The difference between GTX 770 and GTX 760 was less than 20%.
At £180 then the EVGA card is looking squarely at the Radeon R9 285 for its competition, with the GeForce card trading benchmark blows with the AMD.
Because of its micro memory bus, the GTX 960 is most definitely a 1080p card, and to be fair it does game very well at that standard resolution. You can see the limitations of the bus though when you start to stress it with higher resolutions and that's where AMD's R9 285 does look a little better.
At 1080p though the Nvidia card is, on average, the slightly quicker option. It's almost as if that was all it was required to do and no more. We're not saying the GTX 960 is lazy, but we heard there's a homeless guy in there with a Casio calculator doing all the maths...
Because we've got a pair of cards though we've also been able to look at the SLI performance and that's where the lack of a 256-bit memory bus really shows. A pair of GeForce GTX 960s paired up will often best a GTX 970 and sometimes even a GTX 980 - though not always and that's especially true at the higher end of the resolution scale.
You're not going to be able to use a pair of cards with 128-bit memory buses to run games at 4K. If Nvidia had used a 256-bit bus though it might well have been a different story and that could have lead to a little cannibalism of the higher-end cards.
The conspiracy nuts might point to the use of a hobbled 128-bit memory bus and claim it was then only used to stop SLI setups eating into high-end card sales.
But we'd still always say that you're far better off buying a good single card over a pair of slightly weaker cards with similar, or even slightly better, performance. SLI is much more consistent these days, but not always 100% reliable.
Overclocking
One other thing Nvidia has pointed to with the GM 206 GPU is just how overclockable it is.
That's born out by the huge clockspeed boost EVGA has managed with this GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC card.
Nvidia's quoted base clock is a still-pretty-hefty 1,126MHz, with a boost clock of 1,178MHz. We never saw the EVGA card get close to that though. Oh no, our GTX 960 was hovering between 1,417Mhz and 1,430MHz under gaming load.
That is mighty impressive and we were able to boost even higher thanks to both the 8-pin PCIe connector mounted on EVGA's design and the new ACX 2.0+ cooling it uses.
We saw a stable 1,502MHz on the GPU and 3,914MHz on the memory clocks - a stunning 410MHz memory boost. The Asus card we've also had in for GTX 960 testing clocks in at 1,354MHz.
What does that translate to in performance difference? A couple frames per second on average. If you're lucky. Sad face.
Still, the EVGA card is amazingly quiet. Like many recent cards, this GTX 960 wont even start spinning its fans until the GPU hits 65ºC.
Under normal desktop load it wont get near that, and in-game it takes a while to hit those heights given the peak temperature we saw was just 73ºC.
And even when they do start spinning they're so slow you'll barely hear them.
Benchmarks
DirectX11 synthetic performance
Heaven 4.0 (2560x1600) - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (10) 20
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (11) 20
Nvidia GTX 760 - (12) 20
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (12) 21
DirectX11 1080p gaming performance
Battlefield 4 - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (43) 64
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (39) 58
Nvidia GTX 760 - (26) 48
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (34) 54
Bioshock Infinite - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (14) 73
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (19) 75
Nvidia GTX 760 - (13) 66
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (17) 78
Company of Heroes 2 - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (22) 34
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (20) 32
Nvidia GTX 760 - (12) 24
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (19) 33
GRID 2 - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (70) 90
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (70) 90
Nvidia GTX 760 - (58) 75
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (68) 84
Shadow of Mordor - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (20) 37
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (16) 36
Nvidia GTX 760 - (13) 25
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (16) 45
DirectX11 1600p gaming performance
Metro: Last Light - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC - (13) 18
Asus STRIX GTX 960 OC - (13) 18
Nvidia GTX 760 - (10) 15
AMD Radeon R9 285 - (13) 18
SLI 1600p gaming performance
Battlefield 4 - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
2x Nvidia GTX 960 - (38) 62
Nvidia GTX 970 - (33) 52
Nvidia GTX 980 - (35) 61
GRID 2 - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
2x Nvidia GTX 960 - (43) 60
Nvidia GTX 970 - (67) 84
Nvidia GTX 980 - (80) 101
Shadow of Mordor - (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
2x Nvidia GTX 960 - (8) 37
Nvidia GTX 970 - (29) 46
Nvidia GTX 980 - (21) 57
Verdict
As ever, with Nvidia it's not just about the straightline performance of its GPUs that matters. There's a whole gaming ecosystem that accompanies its graphics cards.
With the latest Maxwell cards you also get access to technologies like Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) and Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing (MFAA). These are technologies which either deliver more graphical fidelity when you've got performance to spare (not so likely with the GTX 960) or deliver the same level of image quality with greater performance.
MFAA is probably the most interesting for the GTX 960 and delivers the anti-aliasing (smoothing out of the jagged edges you can see in-game) quality of 4x MSAA with only the performance hit of 2x MSAA.
In compatible games that can give you a decent performance boost and can push the GTX 960 comfortably ahead of the AMD competition. But only in compatible games, which there aren't a huge amount of right now.
You do though also get GeForce Experience support, where MFAA is now integrated into the settings for supported games, and with that comes ShadowPlay recording and a host of other gaming goodies.
It's these gaming extras which Nvidia hopes to pull its new mid-range card ahead of the similarly-priced competition, especially given performance is so similar.
We liked
The EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC is a good example of the best points of Nvidia's new GTX 960 and its GM 206 GPU.
It demonstrates just how overclockable the GM 206 silicon is, pushing the factory overclock almost up to the 1,500MHz limits of the chip itself.
It's also incredibly quiet, thanks to EVGA's ACX 2.0+ cooling array and the fact the GM 206 can operate without fans when it's not being taxed by a demanding 3D game.
And it is a very capable 1080p gaming graphics card.
We disliked
The overclocking headroom makes for great MHz gains, but that doesn't really translate into much extra gaming performance for the trouble.
The 128-bit memory bus does just seem rather miserly and means the SLI performance of the GTX 960 is hobbled at the higher resolutions despite a good showing at 1080p.
It doesn't push the game forward in terms of mid-range PC gaming hardware.
We've already got graphics cards capable of this sort of performance at this sort of price. The GTX 960 isn't really giving us something we don't already have.
Verdict
With new gaming cards we've come to expect either new levels of performance at a lower price point or new levels of efficiency.
It's true the GTX 960's standard TDP of 120W is impressively low, but with these overclocked launch SKUs that doesn't necessarily translate into a massive saving, if any, in peak platform power.
And we still can't shake that vague feeling of disappointment too.
With AMD still yet to unleash any of its new line of graphics cards Nvidia isn't being pushed to really produce at the mid-range. If we're underwhelmed you could almost blame AMD rather than Nvidia.
Maybe we've just been spoiled by Nvidia's recent GPU releases, with the GTX 970 and 980 cards offering a heady mix of performance and efficiency, but this latest GPU doesn't feel like anything we haven't seen before, or even anything different to what's already sitting in our PCs.
It's probably a little unfair to expect more from the GTX 960 than it delivers, and especially given that the EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC is probably one of the best examples of Nvidia's new graphics card.
The GTX 960 though isn't going to be the card anyone desperately rushes out to buy, even in this super-quiet, super superclocked EVGA trim.
No, they'll pick one up if they haven't bought a card in three years and because it's the only Nvidia option at this price point.
Though they will probably still do so in their droves because, despite our issues with it, the GTX 960 is still a good 1080p card, just not a particularly revolutionary one.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1ywJHg9
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