By Nimish Sawant / 21 Apr 2015 , 14:40:52
Nvidia launched the high end Maxwell cards – the GTX 980 and the GTX 970 – last year. Towards the end of January, Nvidia also released the GTX 960, which was meant to provide the sweet spot as far as performance to price ratio went. The Asus Strix GTX 960 is a factory overclocked card which sports impressive specs. Let us how well it performs.
Build and Design: 8/10
Asus Strix GTX 960 has an exceptional build quality. The first thing that jumps out at you are the dual 75mm fans which have the owl-eye inspired design in the centre. The two fans are housed in a sturdy plastic shroud which is placed above the DirectCU II cooler. As we have seen with past Asus cards, the cooler tends to extend beyond the printed circuit board, length wise.
Four heat-pipes help to dissipate the heat from the GPU. You can see them protruding out at the base of the card. Another interesting aspect of the Strix GTX 960 is the presence of a GPU back-plate to protect the rear side of the PCB. This is generally seen on higher end cards. There is a 6-pin power connector on the right hand top corner along with a single SLI slot on the left hand side of the card.
Coming to the display ports, you have one DVI port, one HDMI port and three DisplayPorts.
Features: 7/10
Nvidia had introduced the Maxwell architecture with the lower end GTX 750Ti last year and that was quite an impressive card for its value proposition. Also it was a PCIe port powered card. With the GTX 980 and GTX 970 launched in September last year, we saw the high end Maxwell GPU being employed. Nvidia used the GM204 GPU with these two cards. But with the GTX 960 Nvidia is using the newer GM206 GPU.
Nvidia had introduced the Maxwell architecture with the lower end GTX 750Ti last year and that was quite an impressive card for its value proposition. Also it was a PCIe port powered card. With the GTX 980 and GTX 970 launched in September last year, we saw the high end Maxwell GPU being employed. Nvidia used the GM204 GPU with these two cards. But with the GTX 960 Nvidia is using the newer GM206 GPU.
Made on the 28nm manufacturing process, the GM206 GPU has around 2.9 billion transistors. There are two fully enabled Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC) each with four SMM’s. Since each SMM has around 128 CUDA cores, you get a total of 1024 CUDA cores on the GM206 GPU. There are 32 raster operators (ROPs) and 64 texture mapping units (TMUs).
The GTX 960 is supposed to have a base clock of 1127MHz and a boost clock of 1178MHz. But since the Strix GTX 960 is a factory overclocked card, we get a base clock speed of 1291MHz and boost clock speed of 1317MHz. The card comes with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM. There’s a 128-bit memory bus.
It supports Nvidia ShadowPlay, MFAA, dynamic super resolution, voxel global illumination, G-Sync and other Nvidia-specific features.
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4
RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX
Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB (boot drive)
Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary)
PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Monitor: BenQ GL2250
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4
RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX
Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB (boot drive)
Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary)
PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Monitor: BenQ GL2250
Benchmarks Performance: 7/10
3DMark 11
3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.
3DMark 11
3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.
Metro: Last Light
Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test.
Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city called Columbia. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.
Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city called Columbia. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.
Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is an open-world third-person action-adventure game developed by United Front games and Square Enix London Studios. Set in modern-day Hong Kong the game involves you playing as Wei Shan, an undercover cop, who infiltrates a local Triad gang. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings.
Sleeping Dogs is an open-world third-person action-adventure game developed by United Front games and Square Enix London Studios. Set in modern-day Hong Kong the game involves you playing as Wei Shan, an undercover cop, who infiltrates a local Triad gang. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings.
Temperature: 8/10
We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.
We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.
Power Consumption: 8/10
We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.
We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.
Verdict and Price in India
The GTX 960 proved to be a good upgrade over the GTX 760. In terms of percentages, you are getting around a good 25-28 per cent improvement in benchmark scores over the GTX 760. This is achieved while keeping the power consumption as well as temperatures under check. In fact, at a load temperature of 63 degrees Celcius, the Strix 960 is the coolest running card in the chart. Also its power consumption numbers are the lowest. The fan noise is also minimal. All in all a great package with good performance numbers.
The GTX 960 proved to be a good upgrade over the GTX 760. In terms of percentages, you are getting around a good 25-28 per cent improvement in benchmark scores over the GTX 760. This is achieved while keeping the power consumption as well as temperatures under check. In fact, at a load temperature of 63 degrees Celcius, the Strix 960 is the coolest running card in the chart. Also its power consumption numbers are the lowest. The fan noise is also minimal. All in all a great package with good performance numbers.
The price of Rs 20,500 though is steep for a mid-range card. You can find the card online for around Rs 16,500 which seems like a better price, but at around Rs 15,000, this would make for a great upgrade for someone using a two generation old card. When compared to competition, it outperforms the Rs 20,000 plus AMD R9 280X in some games and is at par with it on other benchmarks.
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