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Today we have six of the finest GeForce GTX 960 graphics cards available with models from Gigabyte, Evga, MSI, Gainward and Zotac. Despite all looking vastly different they share the same affordable price tag, so we will be looking closely at overclocking and cooling performance... The last quarter of 2014 saw Nvidia release its most powerful Maxwell parts yet, codenamed GM204. The resulting parts were the GeForce GTX 980 and more affordable GTX 970, both were faster than the GeForce GTX 780 and considerably less complex requiring some 2 billion less transistors. The GeForce GTX 970 represented exceptional value at $330 where it currently remains despite some controversy surrounding its VRAM. It was later discovered that the GTX 970 can effectively only address 3.5GB’s of its 4GB capacity which can cause performance bottlenecks at extreme resolutions.
 Despite this the GTX 970 is still a great graphics card for the money. That said, since its release the GPU landscape has changed quite dramatically. Capitalizing on Nvidia’s bad press was AMD with their Radeon R9 290X which they dropped the price of to match the GTX 970. Some GTX 970 demanded a refund and successfully got one, some opted to buy the more expensive GTX 980 while others defected to AMD by the now very tempting R9 290X. In the meantime Nvidia released a fourth Maxwell graphics card known as the GeForce GTX 960, which they say is a sweet spot GPU offering the perfect balance of performance at the right price. The GTX 960 might not be in the same league as the Radeon R9 290X or even the R9 290, but at just $200 it will likely find its way into far more gaming systems. Designed to compete with AMD’s Tonga powered R9 285, the GTX 960 became the best value $200 GPU upon its January 22nd release. On release day we checked out the Palit GeForce GTX 960 JetStream version and found that at the default Nvidia clock speeds it was 5% faster than the R9 285 while consuming over 30% less power. Although the GTX 960 might not have been quite as fast as gamers were hoping for, there is no denying it is the best value sub-$250 GPU on the market right now. For that reason we have decided to roundup six GTX 960 cards and compare them so see which one deserves your hard earned cash. |
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ProX |
Posted on: 02/12/2015 11:49 AM
I agree the MSI card looks to be the best of the bunch but that G1 Gaming for the same price as all the other models is hard to pass up. I do wish the Asus Strix was included though. |
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100ME me! |
Posted on: 02/12/2015 11:54 AM
ohh I was just about to buy the MSI card today. Well the Gaming 100ME version. It is a bit more expensive but with a current rebate I can get it for the same price as the Gaming 2G version. The cooler looks much the same and I am hoping it is based on what I have seen here. You get a free FC4 mouse pad so how can you say no to that? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127845&cm_re=GTX_960-_-14-127-845-_-Product Do you know if the cooler is the same? |
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Runyone |
Posted on: 02/12/2015 12:14 PM
Thank God you didn't test with a dozen or more games  |
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cali98 |
Posted on: 02/12/2015 10:43 PM
+1 for the Strix |
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Bezdab |
Posted on: 02/13/2015 12:29 AM
EVGA for da win! |
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žinke |
Posted on: 03/29/2015 06:02 PM
Gainward GeForce GTX 960 Phantom GLH FTW! |