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For the review today we are using the latest Nvidia 347.25 drivers which were supplied with the GTX960 cards by Nvidia themselves. We retested all Nvidia hardware with these drivers for this review, to keep things on a completely even footing. The AMD cards were all retested in the last week with the latest Catalyst OMEGA 14.12 driver.
It took 12 hours a day for close to a week and over 900 benchmark runs to get the results we share today. Ideally we would have liked to include a few more game tests and put more graphic cards into the mix, but time was against us.
If you want to read more about our test system, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q monitor for this review today.
We test all the hardware today at high image quality settings and with anti aliasing when possible. Years ago gamers would have to make sacrifices to get smooth frame rates at 1080p – but it is 2015 and we all expect very high image quality even from these ‘mid range' boards. We include higher cost cards such as the R9 290 and GTX770 to get an idea of performance positioning in the market. The lower cost Asus GTX750Ti Strix OC Edition is also included as a performance indicator of the lower end sector.
Comparison cards:
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1,260 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX770 OC (1,137mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire Dual X R9 285 (965 mhz core / 1,400 mhz memory)
XFX R9 280X DD (1,000 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Asus Direct CU II GTX 760 OC (1,006mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
Asus GTX750TI Strix OC Edition (1,124mhz core / 1,350mhz memory)
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 2014
Total War Rome 2: Emperor Edition
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
How did you guys manage to not compare it to it’s bigger brother – the GTX 970 G1? How does the 960 compare to the current generation of cards? What about 960 SLI?
From the power page “This card consumes more power than the Asus GTX960 Strix OC”. I believe as you don’t show that, I like others are confused thinking you mean the 750 Stix that’s shown. Perhaps clarify by saying “from the previous article” or put it’s results in the graph.
Given that Sapphire Dual X (965 Mhz) while high out-the-box, it’s a fairly “midland” construction, especially with Gigabyte G1 pushing the envelope with 1,304 Mhz Boost (the upper 25% of what GM206 customs) and 3 fans. I thought that Sapphire 285 held up very well. Even power while gaming here appears much different than other reviews only besting the 285 by 15% (stock vs. stock). Noise and cooling given that cooler/fans and lower power, didn’t strike me as significantly distinguishing.
Seeing that R9 285’s have gotten down into the $180’s (with rebate even lower,) this for a $230… I don’t see it. Nvidia didn’t offer much in marching the $200-1080p market forward, even to the point 285’s prices seem on the rebound.
When does GTX 965 comes out? Anyone knows?