Introduction

Last week, NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 960, which brought their super power-efficient Maxwell architecture to the mainstream.

This card is based on a brand-new silicon codenamed GM206. NVIDIA's third chip based on the "Maxwell", the GM206 is supposed to be a successor to the GK106 on which NVIDIA built the GeForce GTX 660. The new GTX 960, however, is meant to replace the GTX 660 and GTX 760 in the product stack as it offers slightly higher performance at much less power draw and noise, with greater room for price-cuts. It also brings some of the new features introduced with "Maxwell" to the masses, such as real-time voxel illumination, MFAA (multi-frame sampled anti-aliasing), Dynamic Super-Resolution, VR Direct, Turf Effects, and PhysX Flex, along with community favorites like G-Sync and ShadowPlay.



In this review, we have with us the Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming, a highly overclocked custom-design GTX 960. It features the company's triple-fan WindForce cooler to ensure the card stays cool at all times. A new feature is that the fans will turn off in idle and light gaming, which results in the perfect noise-free experience.

Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 960 G1 Gaming currently retails at $230, which is a significant $30 price premium over the reference design.