Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition3. Architecture and Overclocking4. High Res Gallery5. Testing Methodology6. 3DMark Vantage7. 3DMark 118. 3DMark9. Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Tomb Raider (1080p and 1440p)11. Grid AutoSport (1080p and 1440p)12. Thief (1080p and 1440p)13. Metro: Last Light Redux (1080p and 1600p)14. Total War Rome II: Emperor Edition (1080p and 1600p)15. Thermal Dynamics16. Acoustics Performance17. Power Consumption18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

It was almost a year ago when Nvidia released their first graphics card based on the Maxwell architecture. My reviews of the GTX750Ti were positive – Maxwell delivered excellent full HD performance while taking all the power it needed direct from the PCIe slot. I said back in February 2014 that future high end Nvidia GPU's would likely lead the way – and as the year came to a close I was proved correct. The GTX970 and GTX980 won multiple awards on KitGuru. Nvidia's Maxwell architecture also walked away with our Excellence in Technology Award for 2014. 2015 is a new year and with the GTX960 being released this week, can Nvidia possibly do it again?

The Asus GTX960 Strix OC is a diminutive solution, a dual slot, dual fan card featuring several thick heat pipes running across the length of the PCB. Compared to the monster Gigabyte GTX960 G1 Gaming, which we also review today, it really is tiny (see picture directly below).

Nvidia say the GTX960 is one of the most power efficient high performance gaming cards, and with a quoted TDP of 120 watts it seems in line with what we would expect from the Maxwell architecture. The GTX960 will surely appeal to a wide audience – on paper it should be noticeably more powerful than the GTX750ti, while shipping below the £200 ‘sweet spot'.

How does the technology behind the GTX960 stack up?

GPU	GeForce GTX 750ti (Maxwell)	GeForce GTX 960 (Maxwell)	Geforce GTX 970 (Maxwell)	GeForce GTX 980 (Maxwell)
Streaming Multiprocessors	5	8	13	16
CUDA Cores	640	1024	1664	2048
Base Clock	1020 mhz	1126 mhz	1050 mhz	1126 mhz
GPU Boost Clock	1085 mhz	1178 mhz	1178 mhz	1216 mhz
Total Video memory	2GB	2GB	4GB	4GB
Texel fill-rate	40.8 Gigatexels/Sec	72.1 Gigatexels/Sec	109.2 Gigatexels/Sec	144.1 Gigatexels/Sec
Memory Clock	5400 mhz	7010 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz
Memory Bandwidth	86.4 GB/sec	112.16 GB/sec	224 GB/s	224 GB/sec
Bus Width	128bit	128bit	256bit	256bit
ROPs	16	32	64	64
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
TDP	60 watts	120 watts	145 watts	165 watts

Nvidia's GTX960 GM206 ships with 1,024 CUDA cores – significantly more than the 640 CUDA cores available on the GTX750ti, but half the amount featured on the flagship GTX980 (2,048).

A bone of contention within the enthusiast audience will be the somewhat limited 128bit memory interface – identical to the GTX750ti. Nvidia are keen to point out however that the Maxwell memory architecture is approximately 33% more efficient than Kepler. We do delve into this a little deeper on the architecture page later in the review.

The reference clock speeds are set at 1,126mhz (1,178mhz boost), with 32 ROPs and 64 texture units. ASUS have tweaked their STRIX OC Edition to 1,253mhz (1,317 mhz boost) with 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1800mhz (7.2Gbps effective).

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