NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Launch Date Revealed

Boomstick777 · 29 Dec 2014 at 17:05

Reem.

~Mike~ · 29 Dec 2014 at 17:18

I'm blown away.

chaparral · 29 Dec 2014 at 17:23

At last after all this time I been waiting there releasing a GPU that can run crysis 3 at 4K at 120fps...... :eek:

Am so happy to hear this....

Tonester0011 · 29 Dec 2014 at 17:28

Darujhistan said:
I wouldn't p*ss on one of these. 2015? 128 bit and 2GB of VRAM...

lmfao

Always laughed at your posts when you go on about 2GB. You've been running that 7850 for yonks. Have you still not ran out??

Squink · 29 Dec 2014 at 17:41

This will clearly be a great product at a competitive price that moves the mid range a big step forward. I think we should congratulate nVidia for bringing such a revolutionary card to the market.

Darujhistan · 29 Dec 2014 at 18:08

Tonester0011 said:
Always laughed at your posts when you go on about 2GB. You've been running that 7850 for yonks. Have you still not ran out??

Hardly the point that was 3 years ago, now 3 years later the same price point is still offering 2GB...and yes it's not enough for modded SKYRIM.

Tonester0011 · 29 Dec 2014 at 18:11

You've been shouting how 2gb isn't enough for 3 years!
How time flys

bru · 29 Dec 2014 at 19:11

Among its known features are a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 2 GB of memory

Ah yes that would be from yet another wild guess, that did the rounds a while back. It might be but Ill wait until its here to confirm anything.

Even if it is 128bit and 2GB that is perfect for the market position it is aiming for.

Just like the 2GB 7850, it will run out of steam long before it runs out of memory. ( go ahead and load up loads of mods in skyrim and show us a bench of it using more ram and decent FPS{by decent I mean at least 40fps}, I'd like to see it.)

Darujhistan · 29 Dec 2014 at 19:36

Tonester0011 said:
You've been shouting how 2gb isn't enough for 3 years!
How time flys

Not really, I've been arguing that 2GB for £200 plus is a ripoff for about 2 years, that's both camps by the way, which it is.

I mean look at this, card chosen at random, £260 with just 2GB of VRAM, and it's almost 2015.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-047-KF&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1750

As noted above progress has slowed to a crawl, while prices have increased, that's not a good situation for gamers is it?

It's not so much 'need' as a blatant rip off.

Boomstick777 · 29 Dec 2014 at 19:46

+1

2GB isn't enough, if your on 1440P+ and wanting max settings at 60fps+ it can be argued that 4GB already isn't enough for a few games that are out in 2014. 6GB/8GB should be standard on upcoming 2015+ high end cards imho, especially if they are going to be marketed as '4K' capable cards.

The 960 however for it's market 2GB will be fine, the peeps buying a card like this aren't going to expect 60fps @ 4K, and probably own a 1080P or lower res screen anyway. It's a budget card with budget spec.

Tonester0011 · 29 Dec 2014 at 19:51

**** it, going into market.
Slapping 16GB onto a card and selling it. Will make a killing, ignore the performance of the card as that's now irrelevant.... :rolleyes:

Roll up, roll up.
Selling GTX480s with 16GB VRAM. All your VRAM requirements for the next decade, performance of 2010.

Geeman1979 · 29 Dec 2014 at 19:54

LOL ^

P4Clock · 29 Dec 2014 at 20:06

lol, this as to be a mistake? i know its aiming for lower budget but :eek:

Boomstick777 · 29 Dec 2014 at 20:36

Tonester0011 said:
**** it, going into market.
Slapping 16GB onto a card and selling it. Will make a killing, ignore the performance of the card as that's now irrelevant....

Roll up, roll up.
Selling GTX480s with 16GB VRAM. All your VRAM requirements for the next decade, performance of 2010.

What's this guy talking about?

Anyway..

A budget card with a budget amount of vram is one thing, so yeah the 960 is a nice lil budget GPU, but new high end cards aimed at 4K should come with at least 6GB/8GB moving forward. We already have games in 2014 that use more than 4GB @ 1080P.

2015 GPU's marketed for '4K' should come with a less stingy amount of vram. I hope they aim for at least 6GB on the high end stuff.

Gregster · 29 Dec 2014 at 20:53

Boomstick777 said:
What's this guy talking about?

He is saying that some people seem to think that so long as a card has masses of VRAM, regardless of GPU grunt, it will be awesome. Anyone with sense knows that 2GB for a card like this is perfectly ample.

Boomstick777 · 29 Dec 2014 at 20:57

Gregster said:
He is saying that some people seem to think that so long as a card has masses of VRAM, regardless of GPU grunt, it will be awesome. Anyone with sense knows that 2GB for a card like this is perfectly ample.

Yeah I just wasn't sure who or what his sarcastic condensing tone was aimed at lol.

Like we both said mate budget GPU with budget amount of vram makes sense. I just hope with the upcoming big boys they don't skimp on vram, as we have already seen 2014 games using more than 4GB of vram @ 1080P. These upcoming GPU's will be marketed as 4K, let's hope they have the grunt as well as the vram to back it up.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Dec 2014 at 21:01

Boomstick777 said:
+1

2GB isn't enough, if your on 1440P+ and wanting max settings at 60fps+ it can be argued that 4GB already isn't enough for a few games that are out in 2014. 6GB/8GB should be standard on upcoming 2015+ high end cards imho, especially if they are going to be marketed as '4K' capable cards.

The 960 however for it's market 2GB will be fine, the peeps buying a card like this aren't going to expect 60fps @ 4K, and probably own a 1080P or lower res screen anyway. It's a budget card with budget spec.

I would be that target market as I have a GTX660,but I am feeling quite underwhelmed by the 128 bit memory controller and 2GB of VRAM.

My GTX660 cost £140 with a free copy of Metro:Last Light which was worth £25 to £30. If the GTX960 is £150+ with no decent value game,I am not sure what to make of it TBH:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_970_STRIX_OC/images/perfrel_1920.gif

I predict it will be around GTX770 level performance,and Nvidia will gimp it so that an overclocked one cannot threaten the GTX970 - they did it with the GTX660 by artificially gimping the power limits on the SKU so it would throttle,and hence it could not really threaten the GTX660TI.

So after 19 months we get a 30% performance bump and lower power consumption. However,it means I am paying more for the performance bump,ie, if it were £160 without a game that would mean I would be spending 30% more for a 30% performance bump.

If we assume the GTX960 has at least 12 months as a main model,it would mean that over three and a half years we would be seeing a 60% improvement in mainstream performance. I really hope the 14NM/16NM/20NM cards have a decent performance bump.

The midrange cards will barely keep up with new generation games at 1920X1080 at this rate.

Boomstick777 · 29 Dec 2014 at 21:08

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I would be that target market as I have a GTX660,but I am feeling quite underwhelmed by the 128 bit memory controller and 2GB of VRAM.

Until we see performance we can't really comment. Everyone thought the 256 bit/bus of GTX 980 would restrict it at 1440P / 4K, but it still dominates the 512 bit/bus 290X at those resolutions.

For the budget gamer a GTX 960 @ 1080P should be fine. If not the 970's aren't excessively expensive either..

Squink · 29 Dec 2014 at 21:15

If this is aimed at the £150 280x market, 2gb isn't enough. A quick cruise through some benchmarks shows the 280x is more than playable at 1440 resolution. The 280x has 3gb on board in order to cope.

Of course the 960 might be ok at lower resolutions, but will be subject to cost saving crippling exercises to make sure it'll be awful in the future, while the 280x is still going ok. After all, the mid range market probably doesn't want to upgrade every 6 months.

But it's nvidia, so whatever the card is like it'll be perfect, with a million excuses offered for its 'alleged failings'

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Dec 2014 at 21:21

Boomstick777 said:
Until we see performance we can't really comment. Everyone thought the 256 bit/bus of GTX 980 would restrict it at 1440P / 4K, but it still dominates the 512 bit/bus 290X at those resolutions.

For the budget gamer a GTX 960 @ 1080P should be fine. If not the 970's aren't excessively expensive either..

I am one of those gamers - the GTX660 struggles with AA more than the HD7870/R9 270 as not only does it has less memory bandwidth but has less ROPs too. The GTX970 and GTX980 had a massive increase in ROPs too over the GTX680 and GTX780.

Whats the likelihood that they will also cut the ROPs down as much as possible,so they can make the die area as small as possible??

I think I am just going to wait until AMD comes out with their bunch of cards - its mainstream gamers like me who get screwed by all this stupid drip feeding of performance bumps and increasingly more of us have to wait for some price war for us to get any decent performance increase at under £200.

Long gone are the days of decent fast SKUs being launched at under £200.

Edit!!

Whats the bet when 14MM/16NM/20NM arrives we won't see a decent performance bump either from either companies??

Reduced power consumption and smaller dies,and complaints the new 14NM/16NM/20NM process node is expensive,so that is the excuse why the performance increase is not more.

Then the excuse will be used for the top end SKU which will be silly money even though inflation is not massive in this country too.

The direct impact of this is that less and less games will be pushing visual fidelity,since the most commonly used PC hardware is just not powerful enough.

This is also pointed at AMD too especially with tepid releases like the R9 285 and the HD7790/R7 260X.