Nvidia released their new Maxwell cards last month and on launch day we focused on the Asus and Gigabyte GTX960. Today we supplement our initial findings by looking at the new Palit GTX960 Super JetStream. This card is supplied in a highly overclocked state, with a bright red custom cooler. At £179.99 inc vat, is this a card you should be shortlisting for a new system build?
The Palit GTX960 Super JetSteam is bright red, and rather attractive – and not unlike the recent release of MSI Gaming 4G cards. How does it compare to other GTX960 hardware we have already tested, and how does it slot into the market? We hope to answer those questions today.
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. PALIT have tweaked their Super JetStream edition to 1,279mhz (1,342mhz boost) with 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1,800mhz (7.2Gbps effective).