GeForce GTX 960 SLI and Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 960 Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,237 words · ~6 min read
0:00
yesterday's video which you can watch here covered the ins and outs of the
0:03
specs of the GeForce GTX 960 and how it Stacks up in the landscape of other
0:08
single GPU graphics card configurations for gamers today's video is two things
0:13
it's a look at the overclocking results and performance of gigabytes G1 gaming
0:17
Edition 960 a higher priced but perhaps
0:21
higher performance alternative to ausus stxs 960 and second it's an
0:27
investigation of the sensibility of running 9 60s and SLI versus buying a
0:32
single 970 on the subject of sensibility
0:35
do quick charging phone wall adapters make sense that's an upcoming video but
0:40
for now this
0:46
one cooler Masters case mod World Series is your opportunity to show off your
0:51
modding skills and win great prizes entries close February 7th 2015 click
0:56
now to learn more so we'll start with a brief rundown of the gtx960 with a
1:01
particular emphasis on gigabytes implementation G1 gaming is their top
1:06
tier of card and aside from being overbuilt with a six-phase power design
1:10
and dual six pin PCIe connectors it features a chip that's gone through what
1:14
Gigabyte calls the GPU Gauntlet sorting
1:17
to guarantee higher overclocking capabilities and given that we got ours
1:22
running stable at 1565 MHz throughout our test Suite we
1:26
either got lucky or what they're doing is working the cool ER plays a role here
1:31
as well though with the windforce 3x's quad 6 mm heat pipe triple fan design
1:35
doing a great job of staying quiet and keeping our chip cool underload at a
1:40
maximum of 67° C even with the card
1:43
overclocked to the max the way that we do for our GPU testing and it managed to
1:48
stay completely silent at idle and under light loads with a Neato LED indicator
1:53
next to the illuminated windforce logo that tells you if the fans are off and
1:57
the cart is running in silent mode something that more and more cards are
2:00
able to do these days but hey it's a feature that's on here thought I better
2:03
mention it I'm not sure why though that we need the LED indicator because I
2:08
could just look at the fans if I wanted to know if they were stopped but whatever Gigabyte onto the rest of the
2:13
card it's got a PCIe gen 3 16x slot on the bottom a single SLI connector on the
2:18
top for support of up to two-way SLI it's got the same Technologies as other
2:22
GTX 960s so that's h265 encoding and
2:25
decoding Dynamic super resolution mfaa
2:29
anti-aliasing with which we used for our testing thanks to its similar appearance
2:32
and smaller performance hit compared to msaa and great power efficiency with
2:37
this card drawing only 250 Watts total
2:40
from the wall for the entire system when overclocked under load in Crisis 3 but
2:45
it also has one other special Tech something that Gigabyte calls Flex
2:49
display technology which is basically an onboard active DisplayPort to DVI
2:54
adapter that affords users a little bit more flexibility especially those using
2:58
an older DVI based display just pay attention to the coding on the back of
3:02
the io shield for which ones you can plug in at the same time now aside from
3:07
the stuff that I covered so far and different stock and boost clock speeds
3:11
at their hearts all GTX 960s are essentially the same with 2 gigs of
3:17
gddr5 memory on a 128bit bus a fully
3:20
enabled Maxwell architecture GM 206 processing core with all the Cuda cores
3:25
and smx's that go along with that and a price in the 200 to $230 range so you
3:31
might be questioning the point of doing a review of one 1960 yesterday and
3:35
another one today which is why we spent a little bit of extra time and not only
3:39
through our windforce 960 at its maxover clock the full OC spreadsheet by the way
3:44
is linked in the video description below onto our standard 5960x test bench but
3:49
we also ran it an SLI with our stricks card to see how two $200 cards stack up
3:55
to a single one of their $350 big brothers the
4:01
gtx970 so our single card testing didn't reveal any great you know Revelations it
4:07
turns out that when you clock one gtx960 slightly faster than another one it
4:11
performs ever so slightly better whether this and all the pros and cons of one
4:16
card versus another is worth another $15 or not to you is entirely your deal but
4:21
our SLI 960 versus 970 at 4K results
4:25
were ever so slightly more interesting in spite of the 960s much lower memory B
4:29
bandwidth and half-sized frame buffer remember two 2 gig cards is 2 gig
4:34
effective vram in SLI it scaled well in SL considering the price of this
4:39
solution compared to a single 970 except in wow where it didn't at all so I think
4:44
that pretty much wraps it up for the Gigabyte G1 gaming gtx960 and also our
4:49
gtx960 coverage in general we used to do a lot more videos about the different
4:53
variants of a particular Graphics core but unless something really exciting and
4:57
unexpected happens this will likely be our last word on this one if you're
5:02
looking for a quiet and efficient single GPU solution it's a great choice if heat
5:07
power consumption and noise are non-issues for you the r9290 for as
5:12
little as $40 more compared to a card like this Stomps it and if you're
5:17
looking to pair up two graphics cards then I would personally go with a single
5:22
GTX 970 over 2960s for the 4 Gig frame
5:26
buffer and the more consistent performance across a variet of games
5:30
that comes with using a single GPU speaking of affordable and consistent
5:34
today sponsored ting.com Ting uses the
5:37
Sprint network so anywhere with good Sprint service we have good Ting service
5:41
but it's their billing strategy that sets them apart from other Wireless
5:45
carriers instead of locking you into some arbitrary oh well 250 of minutes of
5:51
this and 500 megabytes of that Ting lets you use and pay for exactly what you
5:55
need and what's cool is that if you're not sure whether this strategy will
5:59
actually Tru work out better for you visit Linus doing.com to enter your last
6:03
few bills and it'll spit out how much you would have paid by switching to Ting
6:07
so head over there today and give it a whirl if you like what you see you can
6:10
even get a partial credit towards making the switch whoop whoop anyway guys
6:13
thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment if your
6:17
feelings are more complicated than this as always Linked In the video description we have a place to buy
6:20
T-shirts like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmark to one star affiliate
6:24
code so we got a small Kickback whenever you buy graphics cards or whatever else
6:28
it is you buy on Amazon that kind of thing helps us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always don't forget
6:33
to subscribe