NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 SLI

[W1zzard]

With a single GTX 960 threatening to shake up the mid-range the way its bigger siblings did, the question on everyone's mind is whether two GTX 960 cards can measure up to single, bigger GTX 900 series cards, and on the cheap.

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[newtekie1]

Honestly, at $400 the SLI performance doesn't seem that impressive. Yeah, it scales nicely but the 2GB of RAM does hinders it in the bigger games which brings down the numbers. The 960 is a great single card for 1080p gaming, but going for two to try to get to 1440p doesn't work out, the 970 is a better option.

 

[Lionheart]

Honestly, at $400 the SLI performance doesn't seem that impressive. Yeah, it scales nicely but the 2GB of RAM does hinders it in the bigger games which brings down the numbers. The 960 is a great single card for 1080p gaming, but going for two to try to get to 1440p doesn't work out, the 970 is a better option.

I totally agree.

 

[Cheeseball]

Yeah, the 2 GB of RAM is limiting the advantage of SLI for any stressful games above 1080p. It's a good deal if you're stuck with a 1080p monitor/HDTV though.

 

[64K]

Honestly, at $400 the SLI performance doesn't seem that impressive. Yeah, it scales nicely but the 2GB of RAM does hinders it in the bigger games which brings down the numbers. The 960 is a great single card for 1080p gaming, but going for two to try to get to 1440p doesn't work out, the 970 is a better option.

Agreed. It's a nice 1080p card. For 1440p the GTX 970 is the go-to card right now.

 

[RHoudini]

Good conclusion.
Clearly a single GTX 970 is a much smarter choice.

 

[Tonduluboy]

After reading the review, i go for a single 970 than doing sli 960.

 

[Nabarun]

Prospective buyers of a single GTX 960 would be advised to hold off on purchasing their second card until NVIDIA has cut its price by a lot. Given its various components, it wouldn't shock us if NVIDIA can sell this card for half its current price. By then, single GTX 970 cards would have become cheaper as well.

I do hope AMD brings something to the table by then.

 

[GhostRyder]

Does not seem that surprising in all honesty the performance numbers especially in SLI. The card is essentially right around the point in performance of a GTX 670 (GTX 760ti) and honestly the card was focused with its specs at being a 1080p gamer card. Does not seem like a bad value overall for a single GTX 960 if your just looking at a nice 1080p gaming experience but SLI seems a bit lackluster on the card overall unless you are on a budget and have a 120hz 1080p monitor which might work well together. That being said I think the GTX 970 at that point would still be a much smarter choice from NVidias side if your considering dong something like that.

Great that you got SLI review out so fast for this card so users can get a good idea early on!

 

[Nabarun]

@btarunr Would you please be a darling and do some "realistic" tests for "actual 1080p users"? I mean, is this gonna be enough for "decent" Crysis 3 and FC4 @ 1080p? Please tell us what you personally think.

 

[NC37]

Man look at that performance gap between base 960 and 970. That is huge but it shows why 128bit cards just suck no matter how much tech you put towards making it competitive with 256bit. Now imagine if this was a proper lineup. The 970 would be the 960 and the 960 would be the 950. 210 would fill in the 990 and 980. That there makes a lot more sense and scales better. Oh well, next gen maybe after AMD's release, we'll see NV not leveraging the 04 chips as heavily.

 

[xfia]

anyone else just all out prefer a single gpu? i have used crossfire myself and have tried sli on friends pc's.. such hassle..
reaching for high pixel density with high fps is cool but I think there needs to be many improvements.
1080 maxed out with high fps has a lot of flair for me at 27in.. 1440p adds some beauty of course but beyond that I think you really need a large display to enjoy the worth of the density.

 

[gatygun]

Sli is never worth it on cheap setups, you are better off if you can get 1 gpu single performance solution. Sli only makes sense if it's way cheaper same goes for crossfire or when you want to brute force more performance.

For example i got a 290 tri-x, upgrading that will cost me nearly 600 euro's to get a 980 ti, but i can also for 200 put another 290 tri-x next towards it which results in far more performance then a single 980 ti / titan x gives and only for 200.

960 is build for 720p, look at it's memory speed, 1080p is doable in non demanding games, but 1440p its completely useless. Which shouldn't be a shocker as 1440p is still a expensive resolution. You will need 980 ti / titan x / 295x2 performance to push numbers forwards.