MSI GeForce GTX 960 GAMING High Resolution Review @ [H]

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MSI GeForce GTX 960 GAMING High Resolution Review - We take the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 GPU based MSI GeForce GTX 960 GAMING 2G and push it to its limits at 1440p. We also include a GeForce GTX 770 and AMD Radeon R9 280X into this evaluation for some unexpected results. How does the GeForce GTX 960 really compare to a wide range of cards?
 
sorry but this review seems more like trying to portray the GTX 960 as a R9 280X competitor which its not. the R9 280X is in a different league altogether and faster by 15% on avg at 1080p and 20 - 25% at 1440p. In many of the latest games like Middle Earth, AC Unity the R9 280X crushes a GTX 960.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/29.html

http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/19925-geforce-gtx-960-fran-asus-gigabyte-och-msi/17#pagehead

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Geforce-GTX-960-Grafikkarte-259742/Specials/Test-Review-1148357/2/

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/932-22/recapitulatif-performances.html

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2015/nvidia_geforce_gtx_960_msi_gtx_960_gaming_2g_im_test/index40.php

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/lau...launch-analyse-nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-seite-2

One of the problems when having a limited game suite is not being able to appreciate the performance across a range of games especially the latest ones. Moreover your test suite needs to replace older titles like Tombraider with newer titles like Middle Earth or Dragon Age Inquisition.

One of the problems with your website reviews is the utter inconsistency.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...sipation_3gb_video_card_review/4#.VMkmqiwXaZc

"In Watch Dogs the AMD Radeon R9 285 and MSI N760 TF 2GD5 OC were unable to play with "Ultra" textures enabled, because they only have 2GB of memory. To play with "Ultra" textures, you need 3GB of memory. The XFX R9 280 DD 3GB, as its name states, sure does have 3GB of memory, and can enable this setting. Unfortunately, it wasn't a pleasant experience with it running at default clock speeds.

After we applied our max overclock to the XFX R9 280 DD 3GB, we received a significant performance gain. It averaged 50 FPS even with "Ultra" textures enabled, with all other settings the same. This is 20.5% faster than the out-of-box XFX R9 280 DD 3GB running with only "High" textures enabled."

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015..._gaming_high_resolution_review/5#.VMkmEiwXaZc

From saying that 1080p with Ultra settings and Ultra textures requires 3GB for a smooth experience to saying that 2GB is enough for 1440p and Ultra textures and Ultra settings just because its the GTX 960. And now the GTX 960 with 2GB is able to run Ultra textures and Ultra settings at 1440p and provide the same gameplay experience as R9 280X (with almost identical min and avg fps) without any stuttering due to VRAM shortage. come on guys. you cannot get more inconsistent.

Games like Middle Earth and AC Unity show the R9 280X hammers the GTX 960 into the ground.

Middle Earth

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/79978-kfa2-geforce-gtx-960-exoc/?page=7
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/22.html
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...8544-nvidia-gtx-960-performance-review-6.html

AC Unity

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Geforce-GTX-960-Grafikkarte-259742/Specials/Test-Review-1148357/2/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/8.html

In fact people are already talking about how disappointing the GTX 960 is from a perf point of view. So I don't understand why you guys are trying to sell this card to the public over the R9 280X. this review and its conclusion is such a sham.

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2015/01/28/is-nvidia-s-gtx-960-a-disappointment/
 
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I haven't seen a GTX 770 3GB, only 2GB and 4GB...which one are you guys testing with?
 
raghu78 said:
In fact people are already talking about how disappointing the GTX 960 is from a perf point of view. So I don't understand why you guys are trying to sell this card to the public over the R9 280X. this review and its conclusion is such a sham.
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Yes, there is a whole lot of talk about the GTX 960. I have to wonder how many have actually played games with it though and actually have the cards in hand.

As always, you can take our actual gaming experiences with current drivers to heart, or you can point to a bunch of benchmarks with outdated drivers and invalid comparisons (I only looked at your first link) and make your decision.

I fully understand if you do not like the way we test here using real up-to-date gaming experiences on the games that we find to be the most demanding on the GPUs.

Your thoughts are noted.
 
I have a GTX 970 already, so this isn't much of a concern for me but I must say the performance of the 960 is disappointing. It seems to be a bit slower than the 770, which puts it roughly at GTX 670 speeds. You would think after two GPU generation releases (even though the 7** was a rehash) that the mid range card would be a good bit faster than the 670.

Although perhaps a "960ti" is going to come out eventually.
 
Stay tuned for our GeForce GTX 960 overclocking performance review. Even with stock overclocked in-game frequencies of 1300MHz+, the GTX 960 still have a good bit of headroom when it is well cooled.
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You tease...
 
raghu78 said:
In fact people are already talking about how disappointing the GTX 960 is from a perf point of view. So I don't understand why you guys are trying to sell this card to the public over the R9 280X. this review and its conclusion is such a sham
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How about because it's a modern card, uses less power, performs respectably without the need for the wider buses of the other cards, and does it all cooler. How about, because some people want a $200 card, don't want AMD, and would like to know if they should jump on a 960, or possibly save for a 970. Maybe because the actual real-world performance measured here means more to most of the people here.

If you don't like the card, nobody is forcing you to get one. The fact that we can get some detailed information about how it runs despite the ways in which it was differentiated from the higher tiers by Nvidia, is quite interesting at least to me. I've said this in one of the other threads, but if you already have a 770, then just hold onto it. If you're looking at your options today with non-used, current gen cards, and this is your budget, then the 960 starts making more sense.

I personally went with a 970. The 960 doesn't interest me for my main PC. However, it would make a damned good choice for my living-room gaming PC. I think it's perfect for that application. I also find it interesting in that there are other possibilities for this hardware (like a Ti edition.) This whole generation for NV seems to be more about improving performance per watt, not pushing the overall boundaries of performance. That's probably a wise approach, as the next round of cards will be able to build on that.
 
To bad about the ram, or lack there of. Mainstream will most likely merry this card in a minute.
 
Yeah, more RAM would have been nice, but then if they do a 3GB/192 bit variant, it should fit in nicely between this and the 970, and fill that gap. I personally would (and probably will) pick up a 960 for my gaming htpc because the performance at 1080 is more than adequate, and it will run much cooler than the 660 that's in it now.
 
It would be nice to see Shadow of Mordor and AC Unity in there over some of the old games I agree with raghu on that.
 
I see a 960 Ti in the future to span the 200-350 gap. Something around $275 with 3GB of RAM and slightly higher clock speeds would be a pretty sweet 1080 gaming card for the money.
 
shad0w4life said:
It would be nice to see Shadow of Mordor and AC Unity in there over some of the old games I agree with raghu on that.
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Why would you want to benchmark a poorly optimized Ubisoft port and a game based on an engine from 2005? That's not going to give you any useful information.
 
I hope they really push things with Doom 4 actually. Reason being, I'd like to see tests done on a completely different type of engine from the usual Un-Fro-Tek sorts. That said though, if it's totally capped like other id-Tech engines of late, it may not be as useful as a benchmark. Maybe the new Witcher game too for similar reasons.
 
J3RK said:
I hope they really push things with Doom 4 actually. Reason being, I'd like to see tests done on a completely different type of engine from the usual Un-Fro-Tek sorts. That said though, if it's totally capped like other id-Tech engines of late, it may not be as useful as a benchmark. Maybe the new Witcher game too for similar reasons.
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Considering how much time they are spending on it, GTAV might be the next best hope.
 
Kyle..I don't think these people seem to understand a release schedule, nor effected marketing targets. The 960 2GB seems more for HTPC/Steambox/? style computer for a 1080p budget gaming machine. For 200$ really I don't understand what people are expecting they finally have, its a successor to the 660, not the 660 Ti, which I might add will probably be in the product lineup for 250$ and may have 3-4Gb of VRAMand a semi decent architecture to support it. Another simplistic mistake people are making is that this is the initial "Tick" if you will of the new architecture which Nvidia has clearly laid out is a standard of low TDP and efficiency, similar to the 600 series, on the follow-up product launch I am 100% sure we will get a version on steroids like the 700 series was with a 960 Ti probably on the way.

Either way its still a great value for the money, even though this isn't targeting me, a 970 is more in my price range, but due to the memory architecture and the fact its an initial release set, honestly I wouldn't jump on the 900 series and would wait till the next as of right now the 980 in my eyes is the best value and has the proper architecture consistent with the 680, but I would prefer waiting for a little more powerful product since the TDP and efficiency rates have improved greatly.

As for benchmarks, that you were called out over, I can sympathize on your end because tbh synthetic benchmarks are useless to me, rarely do the numbers ever truly translate to real world performance numbers, and are just a stop gap way of judging cards at best. One of the best ways I judge cards is by killing and pushing them in Skyrim with Mods, although an older game it gives me a way to modify the world-space and monitor RAM and VRAM usage to see if a card can handle what it is equipped with and to monitor the GPU usage, this gives me a real world number per card and allows me to see how different GPUs react to the same environments, Current games are probably the best way to measure performance but red and green games can skew numbers, Tomb Raider I find as well to be a fair judge especially for tress FX, if you can though look into lichdom it does a great job on similar levels.

Ty for the review and your time.
 
The only stressful part about Shadow of Mordor is the 6GB texture settings. My system in sig runs the game fully maxed out >100fps. The only thing that drops my framerate below 100 is when I run in-game downsampling from 4K. I agree it looks good, but I don't agree that it's necessarily a good benchmark.

Dragon Age Inquisition on the other hand is a much more intensive game than Battlefield 4 and I think that it should replace BF4 in your benchmarks as the de facto "Frostbite 3" game.
 
i wish you guys would include some older gen cards in these sort of benchmarks to make it a little more interesting, like a gtx 580, gtx 670, etc. would be interesting to see how the old architectures hold up to the newer 'mid range' stuffs.
 
Looking at the 1080 comparison wherein the 770 62.6 FPS in BF4 Ultra vs the 960 at 57 FPS is ~10 % lower, I'm thoroughly unimpressed because my 760 SSC was about 10% lower than a 770 and that was in 2013!

So exactly what is the value proposition for a 960 vs a cheaper 760? Or is there just not one?
 
mrpc9886 said:
Looking at the 1080 comparison wherein the 770 62.6 FPS in BF4 Ultra vs the 960 at 57 FPS is ~10 % lower, I'm thoroughly unimpressed because my 760 SSC was about 10% lower than a 770 and that was in 2013!

So exactly what is the value proposition for a 960 vs a cheaper 760? Or is there just not one?
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"Reading is fundamental."
The 960, according to Nvidia themselves, has positioned the 960 to replace the 660 and 660Ti, NOT the 770 or 760.
Page 1 said:
In fact, something we did not emphasize in our initial evaluation, NVIDIA sees the GeForce GTX 960 as the true successor to the GeForce GTX 660, not the GTX 760. The GeForce GTX 660 was of course Kepler GK106.
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Plus you get the benefits of maxwell like MFAA etc.
 
This is rather remarkable for a $209 (after $30 MIR) video card, which is comparing so closely to a video card that debuted at $399. The true nature of Maxwell's PPW (Performance Per Watt) is shining through and couldn't be any more evident with the GeForce GTX 960.
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I think this paragraph doesn't make sense, you are talking about the GTX 960 in the previeus paragraph and suddenly you quote the 285 without mentioning it first.
 
I have to reckon nvidia. For time to time it gives us previous gen top of the line performance at a mainstream price.

The GTX460 blew the GTX285
The 660 took blows with the 580
and now the 960 is on par with a GTX 680.

And each one was cooler and more power efficient than its predecessor.
 
May I suggest a MFAA follow up now that it supports most DX10/11 games?
 
Still doesn't change my opinion that 2GB is too little for a card with this much horsepower. The 128-bit bus was never much a concern, thanks to the massive caches Nvidia added to Maxwell plus the improved lossless compression.

This is purely a cost-cutting move from Nvidia (since the die shrink is delayed). The fact that the GTX 750 Ti has shipped FOR A YEAR with this exact same amount of ram underscores how ill-equipped this card is. The GTX 960 is NEARLY TWICE THE SPEED at 1080p, and should have enough horsepower to handle settings that use more than 2GB VRAM.

Whatever, can we just bring on the damned 960 Ti now? God knows why they had to break a previously-prefect system and release the $200 part before the $250-300 one.
 
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defaultluser said:
Still doesn't change my opinion that 2GB is too little for a card with this much horsepower. The 128-bit bus was never much a concern, thanks to the massive caches Nvidia added to Maxwell plus the improved lossless compression.

This is purely a cost-cutting move from Nvidia (since the die shrink is delayed). The fact that the GTX 750 Ti has shipped FOR A YEAR with this exact same amount of ram underscores how ill-equipped this card is. The GTX 960 is NEARLY TWICE THE SPEED at 1080p, and should have enough horsepower to handle settings that use more than 2GB VRAM.

Whatever, can we just bring on the damned 960 Ti now? God knows why they had to break a previously-prefect system and release the $200 part before the $250-300 one.
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But this is a MAINSTREAM card. Is this so hard to understand?

It doesn't matter one little farking bit that another GB of RAM will bring out some more performance. What matters is what performance you get per $ and per Watt. GHz = who f'ing cares. GB of RAM...who f'ing cares. The people buying these cards are limited in many avenues. They are dealing with things like fixed power supplies from Dell. They are dealing with smaller cases. They are dealing with a lot of shit. Of course this card won't meet the needs of champagne tastes on a beerr budget. But hell be sure that you can get nicely drunk off it. :)

Only on [H]
 
Trepidati0n said:
But this is a MAINSTREAM card. Is this so hard to understand?

It doesn't matter one little farking bit that another GB of RAM will bring out some more performance. What matters is what performance you get per $ and per Watt. GHz = who f'ing cares. GB of RAM...who f'ing cares. The people buying these cards are limited in many avenues. They are dealing with things like fixed power supplies from Dell. They are dealing with smaller cases. They are dealing with a lot of shit. Of course this card won't meet the needs of champagne tastes on a beerr budget. But hell be sure that you can get nicely drunk off it. :)

Only on [H]
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Games are coming out that use lots of GPU RAM without necessarily needing huge computing power. 4 GB requirement is slowly becoming standard even @ 1080p. 2 GB could become an issue rather quickly.
 
Meeho said:
Games are coming out that use lots of GPU RAM without necessarily needing huge computing power. 4 GB requirement is slowly becoming standard even @ 1080p. 2 GB is already an issue .
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corrected. :D
 
Meeho said:
Games are coming out that use lots of GPU RAM without necessarily needing huge computing power. 4 GB requirement is slowly becoming standard even @ 1080p. 2 GB could become an issue rather quickly.
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Only if you want max settings at 1080p.
No one buys a $200 card for max settings at 1080p for the kinds of games that would require it.
 
Modred189 said:
Only if you want max settings at 1080p.
No one buys a $200 card for max settings at 1080p for the kinds of games that would require it.
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But you can already get Mid/high settings at 1080p with the GTX 750 Ti (with even lower power!) This I know because I have one in my HTPC, and using it right now to play Bioshock Infinite on 1080p high with MSAA. Most other games have been shown to play well at 1080p medium settings.

Given that, it's a hard sell to target the GTX 960 at $210-220 when you can get the GTX 750 Ti with the same ram for $130-$140 (and sometimes as low as $100 if you don't mind MIRs):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487025

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...27784&cm_re=gtx_750_ti-_-14-127-784-_-Product

Why pay $80-110 more for a card that's much more likely to be memory-constrained? If they had introduced this at $170 it would have been perfect, but at $200 ($210-220 for most attractive boards) it's overpriced without more ram.

They've had the entry-level 1080p card out for a year now, so if the point of the GTX 960 is to be able to CRANK-UP the memory-expensive settings like MSAA and textures, wouldn't that imply the need for more *memory*?
 
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Oh I agree entirely. But again, the 750ti owners are NOT the target consumer. As linked above, 660 owners are the target customers according to Nvidia. So I don't think the point IS to crank up memory-sensitive apps compared to a 750ti, (which the 960 will beat handily). The point is to crank EVERYTHING up over a GTX 660.
 
I was waiting for the 960 as a potential replacement for the 480 for 1080p gaming. Given that the 750 Ti traded blows with the 480 on some older games and driver optimizations for newer games should only favor the newer card more, this seemed like a solid strategy. With the release of the 970 (flawed though it may have been in hindsight), I couldn't pass up the opportunity for that kind of performance for $300 after coupon and rebate, so strategy went out the window.

In my mind, this card's performance definitely leaves room for a Ti variant in the $250 - $275 range, which could sport the 192-bit memory bus and 3GB of memory as it transitions from the mainstream to upper-mainstream market. These detailed performance numbers show the current cards being close to the level of the 680/770 at some resolutions/settings for less money.

The concerns about VRAM make sense from the perspective of a user that is concentrating on specifications, but since this is a card that NVIDIA expects to target a more budget-friendly part of the market, it is practical for them to only put 2GB of VRAM on-board. The bulk of people that will buy this card as their primary gaming card will likely be doing so because of the $200 price point, which seems to be some kind of psychological threshold that non-enthusiasts don't like to cross, in my experience.
 
Modred189 said:
Oh I agree entirely. But again, the 750ti owners are NOT the target consumer. As linked above, 660 owners are the target customers according to Nvidia. So I don't think the point IS to crank up memory-sensitive apps compared to a 750ti, (which the 960 will beat handily). The point is to crank EVERYTHING up over a GTX 660.
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I disagree with the 660 being the target. It's not even 50% faster, and that's poor value (you can be sure that midrange gamers are looking for a good value).

It's targeted at the GTX 460 1GB/ GTX 560 series, and for them it's tempting.

I guess I'm just a little bit of a hardass because I know that 2GB ram is already on the way out, and I know how many more years my GTX 460 1GB lasted me over the cheaper 768MB model. At the same time, I remember that the 1GB model was premium-priced at $230, so I can see where this fits-in. I guess there are tons of folks who will take the card with less memory just because they only care about price NOW :D

That said, even though the GTX 460 768MB card was the ~$180 midrange part, it still had 256MB more ram than the mainstream GTS 450. That's the little bit of "missing" value that I can't really let go of.
 
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defaultluser said:
I disagree with the 660 being the target.
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Well, Nvidia itself said that was the target, so...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8923/nvidia-launches-geforce-gtx-960
Overall NVIDIA is positioning the GTX 960 as their newest and greatest 1080p enthusiast class card, and the next upgrade for GTX 660/560/460 users. As we’ve discussed in prior articles NVIDIA is on roughly a 1 year product cycle but 2 year GPU cycle, so GTX 960 is not a significant step up from GTX 760 in performance, and consequently is not being pitched as an upgrade for current GTX 760 owners. NVIDIA tells us that they find that GTX x60 owners are typically on a 2-4 year upgrade cycle, which is fitting given the GPU generations in play and the reason why it’s primarily being pitched as a 660/560/460 replacement.
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http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/22/7...-2-and-league-of-legends-players-with-new-199

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/22/7868903/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-launch-date-moba-league-of-legends

and even [H]:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015...60_gaming_high_resolution_review#.VMqPdtJ4ono
In fact, something we did not emphasize in our initial evaluation, NVIDIA sees the GeForce GTX 960 as the true successor to the GeForce GTX 660, not the GTX 760. The GeForce GTX 660 was of course Kepler GK106. Regardless of this, our performance tests revealed that GeForce GTX 960 is faster than the GeForce GTX 760 in every game. Even if NVIDIA didn't intend to compete over the GeForce GTX 760, it succeeded by offering a faster GPU in this price range.
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defaultluser said:
I guess I'm just a little bit of a hardass because I know that 2GB ram is already on the way out, and I know how many more years my GTX 460 1GB lasted me over the cheaper 768MB model. At the same time, I remember that the 1GB model was premium-priced at $230, so I can see where this fits-in. I guess there are tons of folks who will take the card with less memory just because they only care about price NOW :D

That said, even though the GTX 460 768MB card was the ~$180 midrange part, it still had 256MB more ram than the mainstream GTS 450. That's the little bit of "missing" value that I can't really let go of.
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This, however, I have to agree on. More ram is better both for performance and card lifecycle, and for folks like you (and I, who am in a similar boat) the inevitable Ti version is the card to get.
 
defaultluser said:
Still doesn't change my opinion that 2GB is too little for a card with this much horsepower. The 128-bit bus was never much a concern, thanks to the massive caches Nvidia added to Maxwell plus the improved lossless compression.

This is purely a cost-cutting move from Nvidia (since the die shrink is delayed). The fact that the GTX 750 Ti has shipped FOR A YEAR with this exact same amount of ram underscores how ill-equipped this card is. The GTX 960 is NEARLY TWICE THE SPEED at 1080p, and should have enough horsepower to handle settings that use more than 2GB VRAM.

Whatever, can we just bring on the damned 960 Ti now? God knows why they had to break a previously-prefect system and release the $200 part before the $250-300 one.
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True but you already have your "960ti" there was a "misunderstanding" and it got named the GTX 970:eek: you get a 224bit bus instead of 128 and an extra 1.5GB.:)
:D
 
Modred189 said:
Only if you want max settings at 1080p.
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That's not really accurate anymore. If you are talking about a couple of years ago when the consoles were limiting textures in cross-platform games to potato-quality, then sure, the only use of VRAM was for cranking up MSAA. But more games are now targeted at the PS4 and XB1, which have 8GB memory in an HSA configuration. Increasing the texture resolution requires hardly any more GPU power but does require large increases in VRAM to be able to handle it without swapping, and swapping will tank your performance immediately.

So even on $200 cards I would still like to see more VRAM available. Not saying this is a bad card, and AMD has the same issue on the 285. But as a gamer I'm not jumping at anything with less than 4GB anymore.
 
Modred189 said:
Why would you want to benchmark a poorly optimized Ubisoft port and a game based on an engine from 2005? That's not going to give you any useful information.
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Not that I'm necessarily agreeing with raghu78 or anything, but aren't you being a little unfair to Middle Earth? Just because it's based on an engine built in 2005 doesn't make it irrelevant. It looks good, performs well, scales well, and is (from what I hear) a great game.

EDIT: And it's a pretty demanding title.

Double Edit - Disregard. Apparently Shadow of Morodor is a very easy title to run (other than the VRAM requirement).

Personally, I think a 960ti would suit me better. I still play Skyrim and other games that aren't super demanding. But I would like to be able to play 1920x1440 @75 without skipping a beat, so maybe I should be looking at a 970 or even a 980.
 
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