MSI GeForce GTX 960 GAMING Video Card Review

[87dtna]

It's mostly because of the 128 bit bus, that seriously hurt it's performance. Like I said, it should have been atleast 192 bit with 3gb of vram....then it probably would have been right around 770 performance.

 

[misterbobby]

It's mostly because of the 128 bit bus, that seriously hurt it's performance. Like I said, it should have been atleast 192 bit with 3gb of vram....then it probably would have been right around 770 performance.

Yep cutting that bus down to 128 harmed the performance and gave it a much poorer performance per watt than the 980 and 970. A 192 bit bus would have probably given around 20% more performance overall for about 5 watts or so increase in power consumption.

 

[87dtna]

The only way to explain the cut down to 128 is if there is a 960 Ti planned....otherwise I just think it was a horrible move all around.

Like I said for 960 Ti, I'm hoping the specs come out to something like 1280 cores with 192 bit and 3gb Vram. Thats the perfect beast card for 1080p. The 960 simply can't max out games even at 1080p with that 128 bit bus, you need atleast ~200gb/s bandwidth to do it.....and the 960 only at 112 is just pathetic IMO.

Again thats even if a 960 Ti is planned, I sure as hell hope so.

 

[AliceCooper]

2GB vram, lame. I figured out quick that 2GB is not enough if your over 1080p, even with SLI I couldn't get away from fps drops at 1440 . These cards are not worth the price imo. Maybe good for those who want to save some power, but my power is so cheap it doesn't even matter for me. Thinking getting two 290s will be nice considering I'll have WAY more performance for an extra 120 bucks up front(used reference cards) and an extra 10 bucks a year for power.

 

[evilsofa]

Yep cutting that bus down to 128 harmed the performance and gave it a much poorer performance per watt than the 980 and 970. A 192 bit bus would have probably given around 20% more performance overall for about 5 watts or so increase in power consumption.

That would push both the price and performance much too close to the upcoming $250 GTX 960 Ti, which will outperform the GTX 770.

 

[evilsofa]

The only way to explain the cut down to 128 is if there is a 960 Ti planned....otherwise I just think it was a horrible move all around.

Like I said for 960 Ti, I'm hoping the specs come out to something like 1280 cores with 192 bit and 3gb Vram. Thats the perfect beast card for 1080p. The 960 simply can't max out games even at 1080p with that 128 bit bus, you need atleast ~200gb/s bandwidth to do it.....and the 960 only at 112 is just pathetic IMO.

Again thats even if a 960 Ti is planned, I sure as hell hope so.

http://wccftech.com/gtx-960-ti-benchmarks-specs-revealed/

 

[87dtna]

http://wccftech.com/gtx-960-ti-benchmarks-specs-revealed/

So it looks like 1280 cores is right, but it doesn't say what bus speed or Vram size.

Edit- OK I see somewhere it said 256 bit bus and 4gb, but it also said there's going to be a 1536 core and 1280 core variants. That really doesn't make any sense though. Only 128 cores less than the 970 and same bus/Vram size. I seriously doubt those specs.

Like I said, initial specs on the gtx 960 said 1280 cores. I don't trust anything that speculates early, seems like they are never right.

 

[misterbobby]

That would push both the price and performance much too close to the upcoming $250 GTX 960 Ti, which will outperform the GTX 770.

You are talking about a theoretical card at this point though with nothing concrete. The 960 with a 192 bit bus would have been a better overall card for the class its in. Then there could be a 960 Ti based on GM204.

 

[xorbe]

You missed the entire point. The fact that the 980 is 85% faster while only using 40% more power shows the 960 has much worse efficiency.

It's always like that -- the part with the most parallelism wins. Best to have more hardware and downclock for best efficiency. This is nothing unique to 960. (Just sayin'.)

 

[misterbobby]

It's always like that -- the part with the most parallelism wins. Best to have more hardware and downclock for best efficiency. This is nothing unique to 960. (Just sayin'.)

Um no its most certainly not always like that. In fact its pretty common to even be the other way around. With last gen the 760 through 780 Ti all delivered nearly identical performance per watt. I am talking actual watts not the TDP. The fact that the 980 has twice the specs of the 960 and higher clocks yet its WAY more efficient shows something is screwy or completely unbalanced with the GM206.

 

[Rauelius]

What a "meh" card. I'll wait for the 960 Ti or the 965.

 

[Zap]

Ngreedia at it again, just wait for the first price drop folks wont be far away...

The instant price fluctuations are due to Newegg automatically adjusting prices on popular items, and nothing to do with Nvidia. Search for "newegg dynamic pricing" and you'll find some discussions and articles.

The 960 is also much shorter. The longest one is ~10.5, but most are 10".

Looking at the MSI card, a total waste of PCB. That, plus the cooler makes the card super tall. Good luck fitting that into my wife's Silverstone SG05 box.

The other MSI GTX 960 is 1" smaller in both L & H. Also, look at the PCB. That's how big I wish the coolers were. That way even smaller cases can be developed and used in the future.

 

[xorbe]

Um no its most certainly not always like that. In fact its pretty common to even be the other way around. With last gen the 760 through 780 Ti all delivered nearly identical performance per watt. I am talking actual watts not the TDP. The fact that the 980 has twice the specs of the 960 and higher clocks yet its WAY more efficient shows something is screwy or completely unbalanced with the GM206.

I have a chart with all the hard numbers at home, I'll double check when I get there.

 

[Arct1c0n]

 

[5E7EN]

Win 10 & DX12 card? Will be interesting to see what happens, a more 'efficient' API would be a boon for owners of this card, even with 'only' 2GB fwamebuffa..

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

Thats just crazy. Used 780's on the forum here I've seen selling for $260-$270 or so, and a 780 is way better than a 770.

I actually recently payed $235 shipped for a used 780, but I know I got a super good deal there.

But like I said, I recently paid $125 shipped for a used gtx 670 too, which is just as strong as the 960 and only uses 40w more. I believe 760's go for about $150-160 shipped, and are about the same strength as a 670.

Yeah their pricing is nuts. While shopping for used Core i5 3570 CPUs they were still damn near at LIST PRICE upon introduction for the most part. (hovering around $170-220 depending on seller)

With that said, I'd like to buy a new card for the warranty if nothing else (and the 960 is between 2-25% faster than the 760, which was what I was originally looking at before the reviews hit), but if a great deal is staring me in the face for $200 or less I just may jump on a reference 680/770 here on the forums instead per your advice.

QFMFT.

 

[Rizen]

Um no its most certainly not always like that. In fact its pretty common to even be the other way around. With last gen the 760 through 780 Ti all delivered nearly identical performance per watt. I am talking actual watts not the TDP. The fact that the 980 has twice the specs of the 960 and higher clocks yet its WAY more efficient shows something is screwy or completely unbalanced with the GM206.

The 980 voltage regulation is very aggressive and the quoted 165W TDP for the card is simply wrong. If the load to the card is held constant, power consumption is much higher. Games don't generally load the GPU that much, that consistently.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,review-33038-11.html

 

[misterbobby]

The 980 voltage regulation is very aggressive and the quoted 165W TDP for the card is simply wrong. If the load to the card is held constant, power consumption is much higher. Games don't generally load the GPU that much, that consistently.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,review-33038-11.html

I was not talking about the TDP. I was talking about actual average power usage in a real game in the Techpowerup review. The 960 at reference clocks uses 108 watts average in Metro LL and the 980 uses 156. That is actually only 45% more power that the 980 uses over the 960 and the 980 was also 80% faster overall in that review at 1080. That makes the efficiency of the 980 vastly superior to the 960.

 

[limitedaccess]

Not sure if this has been brought up but the L2 cache is actually smaller than GM107?

For someone like me, coming from a 560 Ti and being budget constrained, this card makes sense if I were wanting to buy new. As long as I can get 1080p30 out of things maxed out for the next 12 months, I'm happy. However if the rumored Ti variants see the light of day shortly, I will probably jump on that instead.

Not all of us can afford $400-600 cards, and have priorities to deal with first.

EDIT: I saw that there are two empty pads where GDDR5 modules would be (one on front/reverse each) - who wants to bet the farm on there being a 3GB/192-bit version in the works?

The issue is simply because of the 2GB vram you cannot even max some games (nor even run them at console quality) at 1080p that were released last year much less going forward.

Well we can argue all we want about it having a 128 bit bus or 2GB of RAM but we can't deny it beats the Radeon 285 in every game and it does so using 100 fewer watts. Where I work we sell the Radeon 285 for $270 same as the Radeon 285 so that's a pretty big win for the green team in my books.

This is like a comparison of the better among the worst. The r9 285 was extremely terrible as a release as well.

I guess at least the GTX 960 does not exhibit as much regression comparatively and has a more reasonable branding and price introduction.

Instead look at how the GTX 960 compares to past Nvidia's releases in this segment in terms of what it offers.

 

[87dtna]

Yeah their pricing is nuts. While shopping for used Core i5 3570 CPUs they were still damn near at LIST PRICE upon introduction for the most part. (hovering around $170-220 depending on seller)

With that said, I'd like to buy a new card for the warranty if nothing else (and the 960 is between 2-25% faster than the 760, which was what I was originally looking at before the reviews hit), but if a great deal is staring me in the face for $200 or less I just may jump on a reference 680/770 here on the forums instead per your advice.

Thats why I always buy brands like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, or EVGA when I buy used cards. The warranty goes off the serial number for an RMA.

680's would be going in the $160-180 range, but their warranties will be running out within the next few months since those were released march 2012 and most cards have 3 year warranties.

Any 700 series would still have over a year of warranty left atleast. 770's were released in may 2013. You should be be able to score a used 770 on here around $220 shipped, which on average is 10-15% stronger than a 960, and would game much better with AA and AF on higher settings because of literally double the memory bandwidth.

Quite honestly, if you want a real bargain on GPU power, and have no concern for power usage, the R9 290 is pretty much the best bang for the buck. Those can be had right around the $200 mark used on the forum here (sometimes even less!), and are about 40-45% stronger than a 960. The 290 was released in nov 2013 so any one should have over a year and a half warranty left.

 

[c3k]

Great review. Thanks.

I'm transitioning one computer into a gaming/htpc, using a 1080 screen. I've got a spare Asus GTX 670 (4Gb) card. Your review showed that the new GTX 960 will not be anything I should purchase.

The 960 performance seems about the same as stock 670's, but the extra 2Gb of ram in my 670 will allow me to push all the game sliders to the right and not worry about them.

Thanks for the work.

 

[chenw]

I have always thought 960 would be a more gimped version of 970 than a 970 is to a 980, but I have never expected it to be exactly half of a 970, 2/3rds of a 970 would have been my expectations.

I think those who were waiting for this card got burned bad...

 

[defaultluser]

The other MSI GTX 960 is 1" smaller in both L & H. Also, look at the PCB. That's how big I wish the coolers were. That way even smaller cases can be developed and used in the future.

Your wish has been granted:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/4.html

There are Two PCBs being shipped for the GTX 960: short for general use, and the long is targeted at hardcore overclockers. The Asus STRIX card is using the short PCB, and the cooler is barely longer than it is, and it reports the same temps/silence as the massive MSI Gaming reviewed here.

If Asus offers this same sized card and HSF for the GTX 960 Ti 3/4GB, they can shut up and take my money

 

[jwcalla]

According to the ad copy NVIDIA is targeting 460, 560 and 660 owners with this card. They claim that 2/3rds of their x60 owners are on those older cards.

These are basically your LoL and DOTA 2 gamers (of which, BTW, there are a lot). But I think there will be new graphics assets coming to DOTA 2 soon so I'm not sure how the VRAM capacity will hold up.

I think sometimes enthusiasts lose sight of just how much gaming goes on in the mid-range.

 

[Arct1c0n]

According to the ad copy NVIDIA is targeting 460, 560 and 660 owners with this card. They claim that 2/3rds of their x60 owners are on those older cards.

These are basically your LoL and DOTA 2 gamers (of which, BTW, there are a lot). But I think there will be new graphics assets coming to DOTA 2 soon so I'm not sure how the VRAM capacity will hold up.

I think sometimes enthusiasts lose sight of just how much gaming goes on in the mid-range.

You could safely say that 80-90% of Steams gamers are mid range/entry level gamers with mid to lower ranged specced machines. Thats what the 960 caters too, not the users on forums like this. Again, the QQing the past day on the web about this the 960 is utterly sad and humorous. Its not as if Nvidia done'st have any other models to choose from if the 960 doesn't suit your needs

And if your that upset, go to the AMD tent and have fun. But whining across the web is about as effective as standing in a garage hoping you'll change into a car with enough time

 

[Modred189]

I'm rocking a 660ti in my main rig and a 660 in my HTPC. So I see the appeal to his card. Quiet, cooler, smaller. All good things particularly for the price.
I MIGHT look at one for the HTPC, but for the main rig, the 960Ti that inevitably drops might be the real winner.

 

[defaultluser]

According to the ad copy NVIDIA is targeting 460, 560 and 660 owners with this card. They claim that 2/3rds of their x60 owners are on those older cards.

These are basically your LoL and DOTA 2 gamers (of which, BTW, there are a lot). But I think there will be new graphics assets coming to DOTA 2 soon so I'm not sure how the VRAM capacity will hold up.

I think sometimes enthusiasts lose sight of just how much gaming goes on in the mid-range.

That includes me, still rocking my GTX 460 1GB, but seriously need an upgrade. I was honestly hoping they would release the 960 Ti first like the 660 Ti did, or possibly simultaneously (like the GTX 460 768 and 1GB cards)...but no such luck

So, does anyone have any idea when the 960 Ti will be released? Given the way the rumor sites were gushing over multiple SKUs, I kinda felt like it would be a simultaneous release.

 

[Arct1c0n]

That includes me, still rocking my GTX 460 1GB, but seriously need an upgrade. I was honestly hoping they would release the 960 Ti first like the 660 Ti did, or possibly simultaneously (like the GTX 460 768 and 1GB cards)...but no such luck

So, does anyone have any idea when the 960 Ti will be released? Given the way the rumor sites were gushing over multiple SKUs, I kinda felt like it would be a simultaneous release.

Nvidia is stretching out product launches which = profit over time. All companies do it. Honestly, just get a nice 970 and don't bother waiting.

 

[pxc]

In the [H] evaluation, the 960 did better in several games against the 285 than I thought it would. I'm waiting for AT's review next week to see what compute performance is like.

 

[misterbobby]

In the [H] evaluation, the 960 did better in several games against the 285 than I thought it would. I'm waiting for AT's review next week to see what compute performance is like.

The 960 in the review is running much higher clocks than reference too.

 

[fanboy]

I don't know about the price as some R9 290's have came close to the $200-235 mark around Christmas time.. also someone said something about the R9-280 which that card really needs to be clocked up to see it shine and then it runs as fast as the 770GTX /280X which i'm talking 1150/1500 clocks on stock voltage and air.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

In the [H] evaluation, the 960 did better in several games against the 285 than I thought it would. I'm waiting for AT's review next week to see what compute performance is like.

Same here. I was honestly expecting the 960 to be a major step back. While a Ti version would be great (and solidify my purchase choice) the 960 still is a significant upgrade from my current 560 Ti 1GB. DAAMiT cards are a no-go.

The 960 in the review is running much higher clocks than reference too.

Indeed they are. I would like to see a bone stock version reviewed (cooling, clocks and all) just for comparison's sake.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

I don't know if anyone watched the PCPerspective livestream on launch day (I didn't but watched the YT upload while I was waiting for the Win10 tech preview to download), but according to Tom Petersen the 960 is pretty much capped at 2GB in current shipping silicon. Don't know if this is set in stone but that is the word from him. Let the QQ'ing and wailing & gnashing of teeth escalate...

 

[87dtna]

It wouldn't matter if it had 20gb, it can't even use the 2gb it has with that raped bus.

 

[evilsofa]

I don't know if anyone watched the PCPerspective livestream on launch day (I didn't but watched the YT upload while I was waiting for the Win10 tech preview to download), but according to Tom Petersen the 960 is pretty much capped at 2GB in current shipping silicon. Don't know if this is set in stone, he is a PR guy after all. Let the QQ'ing and wailing & gnashing of teeth escalate...

Inno3D thinks otherwise, and is releasing a 4GB GTX 960 in March for $250.

But the GTX 960 Ti is rumored to start that price. If the Ti comes with 4GB at anywhere near $250 then a 4GB 960 would be really pointless and, like the PR guy, I would have no idea why Inno3D or anyone else would bother.

 

[FrgMstr]

I have asked a one ODM off the record whether or not there would be 960 models with more VRAM and I got a "We don't know," answer. If it can be done however, I am pretty sure we will see a few ODMs doing that.

 

[viscountalpha]

The 128bit bus just kills it for me. I feel like it's just too much of a step backwards. Those amd 290/290x cards are looking tempting at their price point.

 

[pxc]

The 960 in the review is running much higher clocks than reference too.

Yeah, but it was tested against a similarly priced R9 285 running at higher clock speeds from the same manufacturer. Given the 285's 256-bit vs the 960's 128-bit memory bus, I don't think the comparison was unfair.

 

[misterbobby]

Yeah, but it was tested against a similarly priced R9 285 running at higher clock speeds from the same manufacturer. Given the 285's 256-bit vs the 960's 128-bit memory bus, I don't think the comparison was unfair.

I did not say it was unfair and price had nothing to do with what I said either. I was simply saying that the large factory oc on the card makes it look faster than what it really is against the stock clocked competition.

 

[Blacklash]

A 192bit bus with 3Gb ram would have been nice for 1920x and SMAA in many titles. Perhaps, a better Ti version will appear.