generic GTX 960 thread

Not too many 960 threads, guess not a popular card for $200 128-bit performance presumably / 970 stealing the gaming show / or Radeon 285 and 290. But it was a huge upgrade for my htpc from a mini 650Ti. Got the evga 960 sc 4gb mini for $200. It was on sale at Newegg. Wish it had been more like $175 like some of the other larger cards on sale, but it fit the job (small psu / small case). TPU suggests twice as fast on average, but I'm pretty sure the minimum framerate increase is better than that. The 650Ti would chug really hard sometimes even on low settings, whereas the 960 is smoother on better settings (blah TF2). It almost didn't fit -- I didn't realize the 960 mini is approx 1" longer than the 650Ti mini. Curiously, evga only lists a 2gb mini model now, at the same price ...

xorbe said:

Not too many 960 threads, guess not a popular card for $200 128-bit performance presumably / 970 stealing the gaming show / or Radeon 285 and 290...

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Sums up quite well what people have said. I still don't regret buying mine, as it works well as long as I need it to.

Yeah, the 960 has the unfortunate job of occupying an ill-fated position between its stellar older sibling (970) and a newer card that almost makes it redundant (950).

It fits in decently with Nvidia's previous x60 release pattern, but because the 970 is so much more bang for both buck as well as watt, it's too much of a step down for people willing to pay ~$250, while having the same VRAM configuration as a slightly cheaper version kills whatever unique role the 960 could play.

In my case, it's fortunate that I don't play games that require even close to more than 680/770 performance, and G-Sync does the rest, so the 960 was a good buy. Shame that they never released a 960ti.

Good card for those of us who don't game as much as they used to. Like me

Great htpc card feature wise including thermals and power. Not the greatest buy in terms of gaming performance, but then again majority of gamers these days play F2P games that are easy for drive.

defaultluser said:

Good card for those of us who don't game as much as they used to. Like me

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Yeah, life happens and all that.

I went from a gtx 570 to a gtx 960. I don't really game much any more, some occasional dota 2 and that's about it. I mainly wanted the 960 for hdmi 2.0 and displayport as im getting a 4k monitor/tv soon and the gtx 570 only has dvi and old hdmi that wont do 4k 60hz.

I'm curious; did anyone get the 960 when they had the choice to get a 950 instead?

This is actually and example of why initial impressions are important. The GTX 960 since launch has become a much better value especially if you factor in when they do bundle promotions (resell for $30+). With the latter 960s were actually cheaper or the same price than the new 950 when it launched due to Phantom Pain. If Nvidia continues the cut off point at x60 with future bundles then you get the highest proportionate resell value on the 960.

Another launch perception issue is the 970 benefited greatly due to what it offered at the time especially when compared to the outgoing card it was replacing (770 at same MSRP). Whereas GTX 960 came later yet offered less over the outgoing 760.

Another issue is perception related to value. Performance/price scaling is near to linear now from 960->970, so you aren't exactly getting a worse value. But the 960 suffers the same problem as the 980 when compared to the 980ti in that you don't get greater than 1:1 scaling which what people expect (diminishing returns on the higher end).

Lastly the problem was configuration largely due to the VRAM which has been somewhat alleviated now due to 4GB availability and pricing. Unfortunately at launch with 2GB this short coming prevented the card from being completely considered a PS4(+) equivalent. As such the impression was you might be getting a compromised experience compared to the consoles.

I like my 960. I just didn't need more power than that for now. I got old and only dabble in games anymore. Starcraft 2 and ESO run fine. Will be interesting to see how well I can play Fallout 4.

limitedaccess said:

...Whereas GTX 960 came later yet offered less over the outgoing 760.

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Great post. I also add that the 960 at $200 is the lowest priced x60 released in a while (760: $250, 660ti: $300/660: $230 -- 560 non-ti was the last card to be released at $200). It's very much priced in line with its own lineup while being as good a value as ever, historically speaking.

noobthegreat said:

Great post. I also add that the 960 at $200 is the lowest priced x60 released in a while (760: $250, 660ti: $300/660: $230 -- 560 non-ti was the last card to be released at $200). It's very much priced in line with its own lineup while being as good a value as ever, historically speaking.

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All those previous x60 cards offered way more bang for buck within their respective series than the 960. For example the 660 was 230 bucks but the 670 was 400 bucks and there was only 35% difference between the cards. Now the 970 is 330 bucks compared to 200 bucks for the 960 yet the 970 offers over 60% more performance than the 960. The 960 is by far the worse value x60 I can ever recall.

misterbobby said:

All those previous x60 cards offered way more bang for buck within their respective series than the 960. For example the 660 was 230 bucks but the 670 was 400 bucks and there was only 35% difference between the cards. Now the 970 is 330 bucks compared to 200 bucks for the 960 yet the 970 offers over 60% more performance than the 960. The 960 is by far the worse value x60 I can ever recall.

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Good point about the relative performance. I already acknowledged that the 970 is the best value, but it's nowhere near that high. More like 40% (the GM206 part itself is essentially half a 980).

noobthegreat said:

Good point about the relative performance. I already acknowledged that the 970 is the best value, but it's nowhere near that high. More like 40% (the GM206 part itself is essentially half a 980).

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Maybe I am misreading what you are saying but the 970 is 60% faster than the 960. It is the biggest gap between cards that I can remember. Plus on the 6 and 7 series, both the 660 and 760 gave up nothing in vram compared to the 670 or 770.

The GTX 660 (and also 660ti) were 192-bit cards. So they had slower access to 0.5GB for 2GB models. But honestly while product line names do affect perceptions in practice they are just arbitrary and not very important.

GTX 960 actually isn't worse value per say than the GTX 970. In terms of performance/price it has the same ratio as the GTX 970 (similarly the GTX 980 actually has the same ratio as the 980ti). What hurts both the 960 and 980 is they do not have better performance/price than the higher end card (mentioned earlier post) as people expect greater returns going low. The GTX 980 is actually worse in this regard as there is massive loss in performance/price compared to the card below it that isn't really all that much worse. At least the 960 doesn't suffer this issue from below (950 is the same, or worse depending on bundle) and it does offer a better feature set (hardware HEVC, HDCP).

GTX 970 has between 62.5% to 75% more hardware resources than the GTX 960. Performance delta is around the 60% range typically as long as the workload is sufficiently GPU performance dependent enough.

This generation was a bit interesting in that there is a double effect with both GM204 positioned higher than GK104 was while GM106 is positioned lower than GK106.

What is also interesting is that both AMD and Nvidia seem to have avoided addressing the large gap in the 200-300 range so far (although AMD is now firmly rumored to be doing so with the 380x).

misterbobby said:

Maybe I am misreading what you are saying but the 970 is 60% faster than the 960. It is the biggest gap between cards that I can remember. Plus on the 6 and 7 series, both the 660 and 760 gave up nothing in vram compared to the 670 or 770.

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A quick look at TPU put the relative percentages at 49%-53% at 1080p (59% in Tomb Raider) so I guess overall and at other resolutions, your number is closer.

VRAM was a weird issue back then because nvidia stubbornly refused to move off 2GB even when AMD was providing 3 or more, while they crippled the 660 and 660Ti with a 192-bit bus and an asymmetric configuration, so we had to overclock the memory like crazy on all the Kepler cards.

noobthegreat said:

A quick look at TPU put the relative percentages at 49%-53% at 1080p (59% in Tomb Raider) so I guess overall and at other resolutions, your number is closer.

VRAM was a weird issue back then because nvidia stubbornly refused to move off 2GB even when AMD was providing 3 or more, while they crippled the 660 and 660Ti with a 192-bit bus and an asymmetric configuration, so we had to overclock the memory like crazy on all the Kepler cards.

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Overall a stock 970 is 58% faster than the stock 960 at 1080. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/29.html

A 970 will scale a little better than a 960 with overclocking too. And that 2 GB of vram on the 960 is going to hurt it more and more in some upcoming games. A 2 GB card is already relegated to low textures in Batman Arkham Knight. Of course that game is a joke when it comes to optimization so I hate to use it as an example but it is what it is.

I dont know why Nvidia is holding back on something like a cut down 192-bit 3 GB GM204 960 Ti as it will sale like crazy and fill in that massive gap between the 970 and 960.

960 very minimal or no AA on intense games, to enable it get the 970. Is that unfair?

Or just the silent assassin?

The customer gets a new HDMI, etc. card that 1080p matches the 7970 but isn't really loud.

noobthegreat said:

I'm curious; did anyone get the 960 when they had the choice to get a 950 instead?

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OP here -- yeah I did. Of course from my sig, you can see I'm a sucker for overkill. I waited patiently for the evga mini-itx 960 in 4GB trim at $199 price point.

misterbobby said:

All those previous x60 cards offered way more bang for buck within their respective series than the 960. For example the 660 was 230 bucks but the 670 was 400 bucks and there was only 35% difference between the cards. Now the 970 is 330 bucks compared to 200 bucks for the 960 yet the 970 offers over 60% more performance than the 960. The 960 is by far the worse value x60 I can ever recall.

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Pretty much this in a nutshell. Even the reviews back when it dropped often commented regarding Nvidia nipping it perhaps too much. If you look at the product line it should basically be a GTX 770 in performance, and it isn't. The bus width also limited it to a 1080p card.

It isn't a bad card depending on what you're upgrading from, but it's clearly been left behind in the refresh cycles with the higher end products being pushed down. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone with a 660 or below.

They definitely rejected the "match the 680/770 and reduce price for 960" strategy, instead they pretty much hit 780 owners with the 970 price. Especially summer buyers.