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960: 2GB or 4GB?

Shampoo

Shampoo

Shampoo

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Joined
28 Apr 2009
Posts
799
I fancy playing The Phantom Pain and was going to pick the card up for the job - especially as the game comes free with it. At 1080p is the 2GB memory going to hold me back from a smooth experience? It's another £30 for the 4GB model and I was curious as to whether the extra outlay (£200) was worth considering.

I really don't want to go any higher so going to near £300 for a 970 isn't on the cards. I use VGA (Using a high end CRT) so any AMD card is out of the running straight away and I have no MM access so can't go used either.
 
Not the MSI one I'd want. I'd have to get the nastiest variant at £250. Besides I've already stated I don't want to go above £200 so it's a non-starter and doesn't answer my question. I'm not shelling out unnecessary money to play one game.
 
Well I dont think it worth get GTX 960 4GB for £200, it is silly price far too close to GTX 970 which has the performance of 2 GTX 960s.

I really think you better off get GTX 970 for less than £240 with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain somewhere.
 
A dvi to vga adapter is < £5. You could get a Radeon R9 380 4096MB for < £180. If your set on getting a 960 then i would go for the 4GB version, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
 
Shampoo said:
Not the MSI one I'd want. I'd have to get the nastiest variant at £250. Besides I've already stated I don't want to go above £200 so it's a non-starter and doesn't answer my question. I'm not shelling out unnecessary money to play one game.
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Well there you go.

£200 for GTX 960 4GB is a non-starter! :)

If you willing dare not to spent over £200 then I suggest you to grab a used GTX 970 for around £150 if you can do it then buy Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain key for £20.
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
Well I dont think it worth get GTX 960 4GB for £200, it is silly price far too close to GTX 970 which has the performance of 2 GTX 960s.

I really think you better off get GTX 970 for less than £240 with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain somewhere.
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Problem with the cheap 970's is that they're incredibly ugly and have trash coolers.

Cyanide said:
2gb should be fine up to 1080p, the 960 runs fine up to that resolution.
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This is the info I needed to know. If I can run the game on max at 60fps at 1080p then that's literally all I need. Anything else is redundant as I wont be playing any other games for the foreseeable future. Dark Souls III will likely be my next game and that likely wont be too demanding.
 
Shampoo said:
Problem with the cheap 970's is that they're incredibly ugly and have trash coolers.



This is the info I needed to know. If I can run the game on max at 60fps at 1080p then that's literally all I need. Anything else is redundant as I wont be playing any other games for the foreseeable future. Dark Souls III will likely be my next game and that likely wont be too demanding.
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2gb being fine for 1080p doesnt mean you will be able to run the game maxed at 60fps. Depending what GW features are in it i'd be surprised if a 960 can hold a constant 60 maxed
 
If that's the case I'll just drop to 30fps. I'm unfortunately one of the few who is susceptible to pretty bad motion sickness in certain titles at 60fps (Dark Souls, Skyrim etc) so I'm quite happy to play in 30 if need be. If I could trust the PS4 to handle the game without visual compromise I'd probably have went with that but too many titles come out gimped in one way or another so I just want to play on PC so I have full control over the visual settings.

I should be able to ramp everything up at 30fps.
 
Shampoo said:
If that's the case I'll just drop to 30fps. I'm unfortunately one of the few who is susceptible to pretty bad motion sickness in certain titles at 60fps (Dark Souls, Skyrim etc) so I'm quite happy to play in 30 if need be. If I could trust the PS4 to handle the game without visual compromise I'd probably have went with that but too many titles come out gimped in one way or another so I just want to play on PC so I have full control over the visual settings.

I should be able to ramp everything up at 30fps.
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Metal Gear was born on the the ps, to me that's the only way to play it :)... and metal gear isn't your typical ubisoft/ea game , it will be brilliantly optimized for the ps4 , bet there's hardly any difference unless you play at 1440p or above on pc :)
 
I kinda agree. I've been there since the start of the modern MGS franchise on the PS1 back in '99. Good times. It's just that every game these days that gets put under the Digital Foundry microscope seems gimped or compromised in some way due to the lacklustre hardware on either console.

If I can get a solid (pun intended) experience on the PC with modest hardware (960) then that's the way I want to go this time. I'll read into a bit more into it and see. Maybe the PS4 will be the place to go but with Dark Souls II on PS4 there was this stutter that happened every little while that was really jarring. I don't want to go through that again.
 
That card came out like 3/4 years ago. The 970's getting on a bit now never mind something that old. I'm not going on scam bay and handing over a ton for a card that's been getting hammered since the London Olympics were on. :P

I'll just swallow the cost and grab a KFA2 GeForce GTX 970. Messing about with all these overpriced garbage-tier cards is doing my head in. 970's still overpriced as well, but it's still reasonable performance in gaming without feeling like you've gimped yourself. Should do well for me as I wont be moving from 1080p at all.
 
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I'd have gone for the amd msi r9 380 4gb has dvi-d and dvi-i better than a 960 and loads cheaper than 970 and it has the nice cooler on it. £179.99 from ocuk
 
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Usually some good deals on the 4GB 960's. The Gigabyte Windforce GTX 960 4GB can be be had for around £170 with a free game. I think it's worth an extra £20+ for twice the VRAM. Will come in handy for games like GTA V etc.

Max FPS will be similar, but the extra 2GB will give much better minimums as it won't need to swap out with system as frequently. So overall a much smoother / nicer gaming experience for an extra £20+ is worth it imho.

Alcbeeq.webp
 
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Shampoo said:
Not the MSI one I'd want. I'd have to get the nastiest variant at £250. Besides I've already stated I don't want to go above £200 so it's a non-starter and doesn't answer my question. I'm not shelling out unnecessary money to play one game.
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Nastiest variant 970 will still take a dump all over a top tier 960 :3

For a 960, not sure if it's got enough grunt to benefit from the extra 2GB of memory so you'd probably be fine with just a 2GB model.

Should be able to run most old games on high-max settings and newer games on medium-high (60fps/1080p).

Best bet would be to scrape together an extra £50 somehow and go for a 970 if you can though, it's a huge leap up (check your power supply is decent though. 500W+ and "80+ gold" status).

edit: looking at the graph above, looks like the extra vRAM helps a bit in maintaining a smoother average fps for games that can make use of it, so for only £20 more maybe it is #worth.
 
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