NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Gaming Performance Previewed – AMD Calls It “Unappealing”, On Par With A Rade

[Mei]

The difference is nvidia made all other cards around the 960 performance region EOL, giving those looking in that performance bracket only the one option. Amd shot them selves in the foot a little bit in this area by trying to sandwich it between the 280 & 280x, smaller bus, less vram, slightly slower yet more feature packed 285. They could have had a real winner if they'd given it more vram (not necessarily a larger bus) and killed off their own cards around it.

Of course the simple reply to the 960 from amd would be a 4gb 285, 256bit should be mostly a none issue at the target resolution while providing breathing room for any vram heavy titles.

It's quite an interesting situation, amd could really put the boot in if the 960 ends up well north of £160

personally i find it hard to recommend anything other than a 290 closer we get to £200
so i dont think 4gb versions of smaller cards makes much sense

i do like the 270's, can still play a lot good games with it, but it does need updating with freesync etc ><

 

[Bonjour]

To be fair, it does look roughly on a par with the 285. The only thing is it's now 4 months later.

 

[Jamielicious]

The 285 didnt exactly inspire 4 months ago.

Time for AMD to follow in the footsteps of their excellent value 4870/4850 or 7870/7850 launches and then Nvidia will finally be bothered to offer a worthy mid-range upgrade.

 

[Sasahara]

Just a replacement for the eol 760, with a few extra features.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Likely to have high potential for price cutting if sales are poor.

 

[JustCallMeVlad]

Better off picking up a 7950/70 from members market for under £100. Get a lot more performance and save quite bit a money in the process.

No thanks. Want something fun to Overclock

 

[bru]

Nvidia’s GTX 960 Ti May Not Be Based On GM206

GM206 is the new mid-range GPU die which powers Nvidia’s new GTX 960 graphics card which is about to launch worldwide in less than two days. A recent leak by videocardz indicates that a full GM206 GPU die only houses a maximum of 1024 CUDA cores as shown in the leaked GM206 block diagram below. This makes it an unsuitable candidate for a potential GTX 960 Ti graphics card.

This leak tells us that Nvidia has already used the highest performing variant of GM206 in the GTX 960 rather than a cut-down / harvested GPU die. In turn this leaves no room to introduce a GTX 960 Ti based on the same GM206 GPU if the above diagram is to be believed. All of this points to Nvidia using a further cut-down version of the venerable GM204 GPU to fill the huge price gap between the GTX 970 and GTX 960.

OK it may not be new news, but it makes interesting reading all the same.



http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gm206-analyzed-power-gtx-960-ti/

 

[Orangey]

Venerable!

 

[David Bisset]

Yawn The 285 was fairly uninteresting (can see why the company made it, just can't see a reason as a customer to get excited about it)

The 960 falls firmly into the same boat for me.

 

[Yaayuh!]

Doesn't look all that great, but would be a damn good choice for a steam machine setup in the living room. It'll be cool and quiet and handle most games at 1920x1080, which is going to be the native resolution in pretty much 90% of living room TVs for a fair few years yet.

Sure it's only 45fps in BF4 @ ultra, and won't be able to handle FC4 @ ultra presets, but it'll be a good choice for a quiet steam console and the light gamer.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Doesn't look all that great, but would be a damn good choice for a steam machine setup in the living room. It'll be cool and quiet and handle most games at 1920x1080, which is going to be the native resolution in pretty much 90% of living room TVs for a fair few years yet.

Sure it's only 45fps in BF4 @ ultra, and won't be able to handle FC4 @ ultra presets, but it'll be a good choice for a quiet steam console and the light gamer.

Even for that kind of usage, it still wouldn't make it worth the price tag of £170~ with that kind of performance. It has no busiess doing in that price bracket, and should be in the £100-£140 price bracket instead.

The performance progression for the £150~£220 range graphic card over the last few gen has been kind of a joke, with the exception of the 290 at times hitting as low as around £200 with free games.

 

[Squink]

It's a card for PC World to stick in their overpriced "high end" systems, with a "Powered by nVidia 960 Graphics!" sticker slapped on the side, that'll look good at 1080p on the shop floor.

On the other hand, that's what mid range cards are all about, it's just a shame that this card isn't going to push anything forward. It's not going to nip at the heels of the 290 or 970, or be a bargain buy for SLI on a budget as it'll choke at high resolutions. It's going to have limitations cynically built in to ensure it'll never outperform expectations, whilst riding on an over large price tag and an nVidia badge.

I could be wrong but all the evidence and nVidia's past form suggests I won't be.

 

[JamesH85]

So given the disappointing news, would it still be worthwhile to wait and see how the release of this card affects prices of other cards on the market? Was excited to see what performance the 960 would bring but this is deflating.

 

[Yaayuh!]

Even for that kind of usage, it still wouldn't make it worth the price tag of £170~ with that kind of performance. It has no busiess doing in that price bracket, and should be in the £100-£140 price bracket instead.

The performance progression for the £150~£220 range graphic card over the last few gen has been kind of a joke, with the exception of the 290 at times hitting as long as around £200 with free games.

nVidia are just pricing for a battle with the 285 with this though. They'd never under cut it to the £100-£140 bracket.

 

[Goody_GTI]

So given the disappointing news, would it still be worthwhile to wait and see how the release of this card affects prices of other cards on the market? Was excited to see what performance the 960 would bring but this is deflating.

Seeing as it's being launched tomorrow then yes I'd say it's definitely worth the wait!

Don't forget this is all speculation, wait until the proper prices appear and then make a judgement.

I'd be surprised if they launched a card that was on par with the current 760 tbh

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The GM206 is a GPU made more for laptops where it makes much more sense - the desktop version is essentially an overclocked mobile GPU.

 

[Squink]

So given the disappointing news, would it still be worthwhile to wait and see how the release of this card affects prices of other cards on the market? Was excited to see what performance the 960 would bring but this is deflating.

The stagnation of the high end is holding back the mid price cards and will continue to do so until there's a big performance bump of flagship cards.

The 960 might shuffle things about if it's priced well but I doubt you'll be seeing AMD dropping the 280 to £110. We live in hope of some market excitement though.

 

[malachi]

Glad I bought a 290 Tri-X, barely used for £160 last week for my HTPC instead of waiting for this.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I actually just realised the GTX960 tested had a large 10% core overclock too. So at stock its basically a GTX760 with DX12,slightly less power consumption,DX12 and probably worse AA performance.

I suspect Nvidia will try and compare overclocking to the GTX660. However,the GTX660 had gimped power limits which meant overclocking hardly increases performance, unless you used something like Kepler Golden Bios.

With the overpriced R9 285 it rounds off a crap release of sub £200 cards in the last year.

 

[Bonjour]

The R9 285 appears to be the better proposition between these two tbh.

 

[rodt99]

I was expecting the 960 to be about equal to 770. This is disappointing.