MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition Review

Today we take a look at the MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition - another custom Nvidia partner card featuring the popular and somewhat attractive red MSI cooling solution. This card receives a core clock boost and substantial heatsink design to help drop temperatures. How does it compare with the other GTX960 cards we have reviewed so far? The MSI cooling solution has proven popular with our readers - red and black certainly has been the 'go-to' colour scheme for many companies in the last year. This MSI OC model is said to ship with aggressive clock speeds so lets take a look... 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 128 bit 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. Nvidia's reference clock speeds are set at 1,126mhz (1,178mhz boost), with 32 ROPs and 64 texture units. MSI have three different clock configurations for this card, two of which are only available via proprietary MSI software. I have to admit I am not impressed with how this has been handled, but I will delve into it in more detail on the 'Architecture and Overclocking' page of the review today. The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC ships in a instantly recognisable box featuring their Dragon logo. Some details are highlighted on the front of the box - including the Twin Frozr V cooler. The rear of the box highlights some of the technology behind the design, which we will detail shortly. Inside the box are some power and video converters, a software disc and literature on the product. The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC is built on a black PCB and features two fans which are surrounded by a red and black shroud. Its a very attractive looking graphics card - similar to other models in the MSI range we have reviewed before. The thick heatpipes are visible spanning most of the length of the PCB. The I/O panel is equipped with a single DVI connector, three DisplayPort connectors and a single HDMI connector. Nvidia's reference GTX960 design takes power from a single 6 pin power connector, but MSI have opted for a higher spec 8 pin connector. Normally the reason for this is to provide stability under heavily overclocked situations. The solution is SLI capable, with one connector available for dual card configurations. The cooler is comprised of three thick nickel plated copper heatpipes which run into rack of aluminum fins on either side. This is not a direct touch design however. The new GTX960 incorporates Nvidia's GM206 GPU. The GM206 features all the primary architectural innovations we discussed when the GTX980 launched last year. The Maxwell GPU uses a new SM design that has been designed to enhance efficiency. The Maxwell SMM is partitioned into four 32 CUDA core processing blocks (128 CUDA cores per SM), and each of these has its own dedicated resources for instruction buffering and scheduling. Nvidia's design is based around keeping the GPU CUDA cores fully utilised more often to improve workload efficiency, and to reduce wasted power. Each of the GM206 SMM units have their own 96kb shared memory, and the L1/texturing caching functions are combined into a 24kb pool of memory per pair of processing blocks (48kb per SMM). Previous Kepler GPU's had a smaller 64kb shared memory function which was also shared as a L1 cache. Nvidia have calculated that each GM206 CUDA core can deliver 1.4 more performance per core compared to the GM106 Kepler core, with a 2x performance ratio per watt. While many will negatively focus on the 128 bit memory interface of the new GTX960, Nvidia have added a new memory compression engine. This third generation colour compression engine offers new modes for colour related compression which will have a positive impact on how the GPU effectively uses available memory bandwidth. Nvidia say that the GM206 uses approximately 25% fewer bytes per frame compared to previous generation Kepler products. Nvidia claim that the 128 bit, 7Gbps memory interface in GM206 is able to provide more bandwidth than its direct predecessor, the GK106. (148.8GB/sec effective in GTX 960 vs 144.2GB/sec in GTX 660). The GTX960 will support resolutions up to 5k with up to four simultaneous displays, and support for up to four 4k MST displays. The card also fully supports HDMI 2.0. While the GTX750ti seems an ideal partner for a media center build, Nvidia also claim in their literature that the GTX960 is a good choice for the same task. The GM206 has support for H.265 (HEVC) encoding and decoding. The GTX980 NVENC video engine offers native support for H.265 encode only, no decode. GM206 also fully supports HDCP 2.2 content protection over HDMI. The Nvidia reference specifications are 1,125mhz (core) and 1,753mhz memory (7Gbps effective). MSI are selling this card as an 'OC' Edition with a listed clock speed of 1,241mhz and a boost speed of 1,304mhz. When I initially checked (after installing the driver) via GPUz I was surprised to see 'out of the box' speeds listed of only 1,190mhz core / 1,253mhz boost (see above). MSI have three configurations for the GTX960 Gaming 2G. They are Silent, Gaming and OC Mode. The 'Gaming' setting is the primary one they use on their BIOS, with the OC setting increasing clock speeds to 1,241mhz core/1,304mhz boost. To complicate matters, an older BIOS on this card shipped with an OC speed of 1,216mhz Core/1,279mhz Boost. You can install the new BIOS if you wish to get the higher speeds. Media vBios + Flash tool + instructions here: http://we.tl/4riYMJScdZ. Unfortunately there is no BIOS switch on the card and as discussed, the hard set speeds are 1,190mhz Core/1,253mhz Boost. If you want access to the Silent mode, or the OC Mode with the fastest clock speeds (which MSI advertise) - you have to install the proprietary MSI Gaming App software (which I have to admit I don't particularly like). This a poor decision by MSI - this 'OC' GTX960 should have the BIOS set at the OC speed out of the box, especially as cards from competitors such as Palit, ASUS and Gigabyte are all running at 1250mhz+. As the majority of our readers are likely to buy a GTX960 to run in a highly overclocked state, we felt we would get the overclocking section out of the way, first. Throughout this review we will run all tests with the MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC in its 'out of box' state (Gaming Mode - which is the BIOS setting), and with our final maximum overclocked tweaked settings. We managed to push the core to 1,344mhz, and the turbo to 1,407mhz. This is close to a 13% increase over the overclocked speeds that the BIOS is coded to. We also overclocked the memory to 1811mhz (7.2Gbps) although it has very little impact, if any, on the results today. On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Fuji XT1 camera. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. For the review today we are using Nvidia 347.25 drivers. We retested all Nvidia hardware with these drivers for this review, to keep things on a completely even footing. The AMD cards were retested with the Catalyst OMEGA 14.12 driver. 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. Comparison cards: Palit GTX960 Super JetStream (1,279mhz core / 1800 mhz memory) Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition (1,253mhz core / 1800 mhz memory) 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 201 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. Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings. At default BIOS settings, the MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC suffers against competitor GTX960's. When we crank the card to the maximum overclocked settings we achieved a final score of 35664 points. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. At default clock speeds, the MSI GTX960 2G Gaming OC is the only GTX960 to be outperformed by the Sapphire Dual X R9 285, but we put the blame at a poor default BIOS clock decision from MSI. We can see when we manually overclock the card that the performance increases dramatically. 3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance. Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good. To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.” The final score of 7412 points is not that inspiring, considering the ASUS and Palit cards are 200 and 400 points ahead respectively. When we overclock to 1344mhz the score increases to just over 8,000 points.Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable: Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems Multicore CPU support Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles) Powerful C++ API Comprehensive performance profiling system Flexible XML-based data structures We set Quality to 'Ultra', Tessellation to 'Normal', Anti Aliasing to 4 times and the resolution to 1920x1080 (1080p). Performance slots in as we would expect, scoring at the bottom of the GTX960 pile until we manually overclock the card to 1,344mhz.Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia). We test at both 1080p and 1440p with the ULTIMATE quality image profile enabled. At default clock speeds the MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC is outperformed slightly by the faster cards. Our maximum overclocked speeds however highlight potential performance gains. Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia). We test at both 1080p and 1440p, with the game engines 'ULTRA' image quality profile and with 8 times Anti Aliasing enabled. Good gameplay performance at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions. When overclocked, the frame rates increase proportionally. Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Garrett, a master thief who has been away from his hometown for a long time, returns to it, a place known only as The City, and finds it ruled with an iron grip by a tyrant called The Baron. While The City is ravaged by a plague, the rich continue to live in isolation and good fortune while the poor are forming numerous mobs against the authorities, Garrett intends to use the volatile situation to his favor. (Wikipedia). A very demanding engine, especially at 1440p. Performance at 1080p is perfectly playable, but at 1440p a graphic upgrade is needed. On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: quality high, SSAA on, 16AF, Tessellation normal. Another demanding engine, even at 1080p. This engine is a clear indication of the benefits associated with manually overclocking the card to the limit. Before overclocking the frame rate dropped below 25 frames per second, which many consider the smooth point for motion. When overclocked, the frame rate increases a little to drive the rate above 25 frames per second. Total War: ROME II Emperor Edition. Emperor Edition collects together all free content to date, which includes wide-ranging revisions, additions to game features and adds a brand new Campaign Pack expansion, ‘Imperator Augustus’. We test the game at 1080p with the image quality settings at the maximum - 'EXTREME'. Unless we drop image quality settings noticeably, this game needs more powerful hardware to run smoothly at 1440p. A close call at these high image quality settings. Again, overclocking the card reaps reward - minimum frame rates increase to 29. The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic. The Twin Frozr cooler V performs exceptionally well, peaking at 54c under load. This is only a single degree worse than the Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC is a very quiet card, running at around 32dBa when gaming. Almost inaudible and likely drown out by a couple of case fans. We normally test power demand direct from the VGA card input, with our Keithley Integra unit. Today however we decided to go with a more traditional approach - measuring system wide load, minus the monitor. The system we are using for this review today is detailed HERE. The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition system demands 187 watts under load, a couple of watts less than the Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition under the same conditions. As we said before Nvidia's mid range GTX960 has been some time coming - almost a year after Maxwell was introduced with the GTX750ti. The GTX960 specifically targets the gaming audience with a budget restriction of £200. For many this is the gaming 'sweet spot'. The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC reviewed today is priced at £175.99 and while equal in performance to AMD's R9 285, it does drain 43 watts less power at the socket. The Twin Frozr V cooler runs exceptionally quiet under load, and we love the appearance of the solution. I feel it is the most attractive of all the GTX960 cards that we have reviewed to date. Looking back to our earlier reviews of the same architecture, The Palit GTX960 Super Jetstream performed very well, but it was let down by a cooling system which was clearly inferior to those found on the ASUS GTX960 Strix OC Edition and MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition. The GPU core on the Palit version of the card runs noticeably hotter (7-8c) under load. I would be remiss not to mention the somewhat bizarre logic behind MSI's decision to install the 'Gaming' clock speeds on the cards BIOS (1190mhz). This MSI solution is marketed by the company highlighting the 'OC' clock settings, and is sold as the OC Model (shown on the front of the box). Why then place the slower Gaming configuration on the BIOS? The reality of the lower clock speed means that out of the box, the MSI card is outperformed by both Asus and Palit models. Many users will never install the MSI Gaming App so they will likely be running at the lower 1190mhz clock speeds. This is extremely disappointing, especially for such a renowned, well established company as MSI. This is how they should have done it: Sell the card with the BIOS at 1,241mhz and set the software based 'OC' setting to a higher 1,280mhz. As it stands, we wouldn't quite call it mis-advertising, but the clock speed deficit does leave a sour taste in my mouth - I don't agree with forcing the user to install proprietary software then having to select an 'OC' option to get the advertised clock speeds. Additionally, some of these MSI cards shipped with a lower BIOS OC speed of 1,216mhz Core/1,279mhz Boost. You can install the new BIOS if you wish to get the full 1,241mhz Core/1304mhz Boost clock speeds. Media vBios + Flash tool + instructions here: http://we.tl/4riYMJScdZ. Obviously more savvy users won't care too much about the disappointing BIOS related clock speeds, and will use a tool such as MSI Afterburner to overclock the card manually to within an inch of its life. At these speeds the Gaming 2G OC really sings, and can compete with any other GTX960 solution on the market. You can buy the MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition from Overclockers UK for £175.99 inc vat. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros: Maxwell architecture is very efficient. beautiful looking card. quiet under load. low power consumption. overclocks well. solid performance at 1080p. Cons: Its running at 1190mhz out of the box. End user forced to install proprietary MSI software to get advertised OC speeds. Kitguru says: The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition is a beautiful looking card. That said, it is actually the slowest of the GTX960's that we have tested, out of the box. Manually overclocking the card gives results.