MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition Review

1. Introduction2. MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC3. 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

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.

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