Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 iChill X3 Air Boss Ultra Review

1. Introduction2. Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 iChill X3 Air Boss Ultra3. 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 look at the Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 iChill X3 Air Boss Ultra, one of the most ludicrously named graphics cards in history. This card ships with a monstrous cooling system which will need to perform at the top of its class if it is to justify the physical dimensions. Today we find out if the Inno3D card is delightfully delicious, or hideously horrific.

The Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 iChill X3 Air Boss Ultra is certainly distinctive in appearance, the sharp jutting edges remind me of a sadistic weapon that Jigsaw would use in a gory SAW flix. I can't say the appearance appeals to me, but in the world of hardware, beauty is firmly in the eye of the beholder.

For those interested, the ‘Air Boss’ name is a naval term used on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. The Air Boss is in charge of all the operations of the flight deck from moving planes around and landing and launching aircraft. The Air Boss resides in the tower and communicates with the flight deck via a megaphone. Sure, its all slightly corny, but its nothing new as graphics card manufacturers try to come up with the next big product brand name.

Shorter names are more effective, a point which Inno3D have missed completely. We all remember the Nvidia GTX Titan brand name – would it have worked as well with a moniker such as Nvidia GTX Titan Mega Blaster Death Ray Ultimate Obliteration Edition? No, precisely.

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. Inno3D have enhanced the core speed to 1,329mhz – a considerable 18% overclock over reference. The GDDR5 memory is also slightly overclocked, running at 1,800mhz (7.2Gbps effective).

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