GeForce GTX 960 3DMark Numbers Emerge

[Xzibit]

I doubt that this card is targeted at anything above 1080p.

It's a bit more tedious to post multiple resolutions but ok here you go

The GTX 960 will undoubtedly fall somewhere between the GTX 760 and GTX 770. If the price point is $250 then the R9 290 for $10 to $15 more will be the better deal.

Sorry, I know what you meant I was just making light of it. Sarcasm and dry sense of humor doesn't come across in text.

If the price is $200+ it will be 750/Ti again. Focus will be on power consumption rather then price/performance. On Nvidia side it will be seen as a bargain because performance/prices of 600 & 700 similar cards are much higher.

 

[Fluffmeister]

So again comparing a card released a year later is not ok yet you talk about it constantly and make references to cards spaced a year out??? On top of that if 15% average is not that interesting then why is less than 15% interesting now?

By all means compare what you want, just don't let the realities of the situation change the fact that 7970 wasn't quite as special as you thought.

I could bang on about the time scale differences, using the same node, power savings, more performance, and cherry pick benchmarks till the cows come home.

So it did more to "raise the bar" in ways that at that time folk didn't seem as eager to tout, in today’s thinking many are consider[ing] that as a Win! - Thanks Casecutter

To that History... The database is showing both at 40nm! The GTX 580 showed Nov 9th, 2010 (520 mm²)/ 6970 Dec 14th, 2010 (389 mm²). While the 6970 showed a month after the GTX580, yes didn't take the "crown", but it took its thunder. At 2560x1600 it was like 10% less, although MSRP'd for 25% less, offering 12% better Perf/W, and 15% Perf/$. So it did more to "raise the bar" in ways that at that time folk didn't seem as eager to tout, in today’s thinking many are consider that as a Win!

I love reading the comments on that 6970 review, one of our resident AMD fans predicted Cayman was gonna be 35% faster than GF110.

 

[mxp02]

Yep, disappointing. A mid range card should be able to run 4K in 2015. or at least 1440p.

If 980 is the mid-size die of maxwell,then compare the specs between 980 and 960,you'll find out it equals 680/650ti.That means 960 is actually 950ti according to former naming method,it's a low-end card.
Once upon a time,GTS 250 is mid-end,maybe in the future the only thing X50 can do is video playback like GT 720.

 

[xorbe]

Looking at these numbers, the GTX 960 could be an interesting offering for Full HD (1920 x 1080) gaming, not a pixel more.

Told ya that 128-bit is gonna hurt ... it's like when a SandCraft SSD runs into random data, the compression doesn't help. 128 is 1/3 of the big guy.

 

[GhostRyder]

I doubt that this card is targeted at anything above 1080p.

It's a bit more tedious to post multiple resolutions but ok here you go

The GTX 960 will undoubtedly fall somewhere between the GTX 760 and GTX 770. If the price point is $250 then the R9 290 for $10 to $15 more will be the better deal.

For some reason based on what I am seeing of it this card sounds like its going to be a GTX 670 (760ti) area of power card. But that is just a guess of course based on the preliminary results and what is known so far.

I think its really going to come down to the price in the end and if it can justify itself among the other cards in the standings, I am more worried about that than anything since people seem to be pointing it towards $250+ which to me for the performance drop its to close to a GTX 970 (Price wise) not even including R9 280X and R9 290's which are around/cheaper than that. But of course that can change and it may end up being $200 which would make it a decent value.

 

[revin]

I'm currently prepping an article

I took a day off my day-job to do this, and now I'm starting to realize it's going to take a lot longer.

Thanks @RCoon THAT is extremely considerate of you to do this !

 

[TheGuruStud]

AMD Defense Force can't handle the truth that 128bit card is almost fast as 280X 384bit.

Troll. The 7970 is 3 yrs old lol

 

[sergionography]

When Nvidia introduced the Kepler (GTX 680) line, they did something different than they had in the past - they introduced the mid-range GPU first, albeit at the price of the previous high-end GPU. Brilliant marketing move. It allowed them to move the price scale up. No longer were they selling Gx204 GPU's for $260. Now they're selling GM204's for $550. When I read through a thread like this, I see that a lot of people don't seem to understand this. This GTX 960's "grandfather" is the GTS 450.
(please don't get picky with this list - I know there are some minor factual errors, but I've tried to compress as much as possible)
Gx200/210 - Nvidia high end: GTX 285 - 480/580 - 780/780 Ti
Gx204/214 - Nvidia mid range GTX 260 - 460/560 - 680/770 - 970/980
Gx206 - Nvidia entry: GTS 450 - GTX 550 - 660 - 960
... and that leaves the GTX 750/Ti. Notice that it's not SLI compatible? It belongs to the group that had the 8400GS - GT 210/220 - GT 440/530/630/730 (the 750 Ti is my pet peeve - is should cost less than $100)

It's easy to get lost in the numbers, so maybe think of it this way. What's been the difference between the mid-range cards and the high end cards since the GTX 2xx days? In most cases, it's been the settings that you could run a game at. You could get nearly identical FPS, just not at the same detail settings.
So,

..is right, but the GTX 960 is not a mid-range card. The 970/980 are, and can.

Now that's a very sound argument however there are a few things you overlooked. 1 is the increased cost of wafers/yield 2 is die size.

When nvidia released Kepler at 28nm 300-350mm2 die size was fairly expensive. But regardless of that If we are to ignore point1 and move to point 2, then the argument becomes over die size and how much computational real estate u r getting for your money. Now gtx680/770 at 300mm2 is so mid range in my opinion which is similar to a gtx460, but gtx980 is a 400mm2 die so it is not totally midrange yet far from nvidias best, and then u have gtx 960 at about 200mm2 which is low-mid. Now one thing that really upsets me is that this whole competition between amd and nvidia is not going in the right direction because all nvidia does is release cards with very familiar performance but at higher efficiency, and then amd releases a chip with slightly better performance on a smaller die therefore lower price (but clocking too high and sacrificing some of the efficiency due to that) because all they seem to be concerned about is that superficial being the faster single gpu maker by slightly one upping the competitors best, but overall it only makes the market barely move forward. And what even makes it worse is how people were super excited about nvidia and how mighty their engineering is with Maxwell because they achieved slightly better performance than gtx780 ti but with a die that is 400mm2 instead of 550mm and by default was way more power efficient, but for God's sake this isn't engineering noble prize nor r we here to give away beat engineering masterpiece awards. just give me a darn faster card at the same power envelope, because if I'm running a gtx780ti and u r targetting me as a customer then obviously I have a psu and a case that accommodates the power use and size of card, but no way in hell I'm gonna get 980 because I'm not buying electricity from you nvidia, I'm buying performance.

So to summarize my rant, efficiency is important for sure but clearly it's being abused to milk money out of customers because it's not being used to push performance to the limit, and everyone who bought gtx980 and feel superior because of how efficient their cards is need to remember that this is pretty much last year's performance which is supposed to cost less today, and that if they think they saved on electricity then in reality they didnt, they just paid the bill to nvidia instead of the electric company.

 

[Pumper]

When Nvidia introduced the Kepler (GTX 680) line, they did something different than they had in the past - they introduced the mid-range GPU first, albeit at the price of the previous high-end GPU. .

This conspiracy theory is still alive and well I see. I like the part where you provide sources from nvidia that 680 was supposed to be 660. Oh, wait, you did not do that. Strange, considering that you present it as fact.

 

[repman244]

Reading this topic makes me think that the Radeon HD 2900XT is still the fastest GPU out there since it has a 512-bit mem bus.

Seriously there are so many other factors that come into play while most people are looking at that number...I thought this was a tech forum

 

[Recus]

Because the bus is all that matters, but by your logic its almost as fast as a 256bit GTX 770 which is slower than a R9 280X so what was the point of the comment?.

Ok. 128bit is almost fast as 256/384bit. Problem?

Is there some difference between "standard" and "extreme" FireStrike? I have never heard of it termed as "standard", just good old "FireStrike Extreme".

Looks Extreme to me. 960 - 3438, 280X - 3560.

That's just it, you're living in the last decade. This is new technology, and you really have to forget what you knew about bus-width and performance. The compression means that a 128 bit bus now acts the same as at LEAST a 192 bit bus. There's nothing wrong with this where it's aimed. The performance numbers so far show it between 760 and 770 performance. If it's also more energy efficient, it's a complete win, and they can replace the 760 in their lineup.

Fully agree. I bet everyone who won't agree that 128bit can deliver performance in 2015 won't agree with this chart.

Troll. The 7970 is 3 yrs old lol

Why so desperate? By your logic you won't be able to buy R9 3x0 because your HD 7950 is 3 years old and you can't compare old vs new?

 

[rtwjunkie]

This conspiracy theory is still alive and well I see. I like the part where you provide sources from nvidia that 680 was supposed to be 660. Oh, wait, you did not do that. Strange, considering that you present it as fact.

What about his post was comspiracy? Are you the only one who is unaware that the 680 was sold as the top end chip for the 6 series, but was in actuality their midline Kepler. We didnt get topflight kepler until the 780.

Nvidia have done the same, exact thing this time around. I hope you DO know the 980 and 970 are not the top of the line Maxwell chips?

 

[Blue-Knight]

I hope you DO know the 980 and 980 are not tje top of the line Maxwell chips?

They should not be. It is not $1000+. And it is placed above the GTX Titan X: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus. And those cost a lot more than the GTX 980s.

They will certainly make others to put on top of that, unless NVIDIA has changed their mind.

 

[rtwjunkie]

They should not be. It is not $1000+. And it is placed above the GTX Titan X: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus. And those cost a lot more than the GTX 980s.

They will certainly make others to put on top of that, unless NVIDIA has changed their mind.

You're right, they Shouldn't do this. It confuses people. But the fact is, they chose to use the mid-grade maxwell chip on their top-grade numbering: Gm204 on the 980.

You won't see the 9 series with the full-bodied GM200 chip. It is happening almost as an exact repeat of the 6 series.

 

[64K]

They should not be. It is not $1000+. And it is placed above the GTX Titan X: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus. And those cost a lot more than the GTX 980s.

They will certainly make others to put on top of that, unless NVIDIA has changed their mind.

It seems that Nvidia is following the same playbook with Maxwell that they did with Kepler. The GM210 Titan will drop first and be somewhere around $1,000. According to Jen-Hsun Huang they "sold like hotcakes" at that price. Then the GM210 gaming card (not sure what they will call it) which will beat the GTX 980 by a good bit and then the Ti version of that card which will smoke a GTX 980. The Ti version should come in somewhere around $700. All of this is just speculation on my part.

 

[eroldru]

128-bit was such a bad move NVIDIA!

 

[repman244]

128-bit was such a bad move NVIDIA!

Why?

 

[rtwjunkie]

Why?

Don't worry about it. He's not kept up to speed with the new technology, and doesn't understand 128 bit now, on Maxwell, is not the 128 bit of old.

 

[rruff]

Just noticed that the 960 and 750 Ti share the same bus width.

Even the 750 has the same bus width. But ram speed goes 5GHz, 5.4GHz, and 7GHz.

In shaders, TMUs, ROPS, and GB of vram the 960 is 2x a 750. Only in bandwidth is there a mere 40% increase. The 960 is exactly 1/2 a 980 in all 5 metrics.

I don't believe this is the card that Nvidia held back last fall... rather that would have been a further reduced GM204 based card. The story was that it would have cut into 970 sales, but there is no way *this* 960 would have done that. So I'm sure we will see another model to fill that space and possibly even a 1280 shader GM206 card. Any *could* have been called a GTX 960, but it's just random naming/marketing, and doesn't have any bearing on price/performance regardless. As it stands there is still a huge gap between the 750 Ti and 960 to fill as well. This 960 should be $200 or less and I hope it is, but it really comes down to AMD. Nvidia currently dominates this market well enough that they can toy with their competition. A 960 that performs as well as a R9 285 will be able to get a price premium just because it is new, it's Nvidia, and it uses a lot less power.

 

[GhostRyder]

This conspiracy theory is still alive and well I see. I like the part where you provide sources from nvidia that 680 was supposed to be 660. Oh, wait, you did not do that. Strange, considering that you present it as fact.

There is no conspiracy, its a fact that the mid range was sold as top end based on the chip designations and how things were done in the past. The problem/debate is more around the fact if this is an ok strategy or not more than anything because depending on how much performance difference there is it causes problems with people be lured by "Higher Numbers" or forcing us to wait years for actual performance changes. Not everyone is effected by this but it does slow things down which is where many of the problems lie.

What about his post was comspiracy? Are you the only one who is unaware that the 680 was sold as the top end chip for the 6 series, but was in actuality their midline Kepler. We didnt get topflight kepler until the 780.

Nvidia have done the same, exact thing this time around. I hope you DO know the 980 and 970 are not the top of the line Maxwell chips?

^Bingo

It seems that Nvidia is following the same playbook with Maxwell that they did with Kepler. The GM210 Titan will drop first and be somewhere around $1,000. According to Jen-Hsun Huang they "sold like hotcakes" at that price. Then the GM210 gaming card (not sure what they will call it) which will beat the GTX 980 by a good bit and then the Ti version of that card which will smoke a GTX 980. The Ti version should come in somewhere around $700. All of this is just speculation on my part.

Yep, but this round hopefully from what I am hearing people are more aware of the truth on the Titan branding so I am hoping people pay more attention and fight this so we can end this norm for everyone's sake. $1000 bucks is something I think everyone would rather not have to invest into a single GPU card at this point.

128-bit was such a bad move NVIDIA!

Nothing wrong with 128bit bus as long as everything else is up to speed (No pun intended). We have jumped back and fourth on bus speeds constantly and things like vram speed getting higher make up for a lower bus speed on top of new technologies that help increase it as well. A 128bit bus is more than enough for a card like this aimed at the area around the 760 and 770 because those cards are aimed at 1080p with 2gb of vram and with the higher ram speed the memory bandwidth difference is not to much to cause problems. Even if they had put a 192bit or 256bit bus it would just end up being wasted because most people who look at this card are probably not considering gaming above 1080p right now as 2gb is generally what is recommended for 1080p and below not to mention the price increase of a higher resolution monitor.

The cards performance is where it should be honestly especially if we agree there will probably be a GTX 960ti, it would bring the cost up to have the bigger bus which on cards that get into the lower grounds can really make every penny count when it comes to price. I don't see the cards specs as a bad thing and honestly worry more about the price if its to be believed its higher than the original $200 that was on our minds.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

This conspiracy theory is still alive and well I see. I like the part where you provide sources from nvidia that 680 was supposed to be 660. Oh, wait, you did not do that. Strange, considering that you present it as fact.

Then, apparently, w1zzard's in on it too:

NVIDIA clearly has a winner on their hands with the GTX 680. The new card, which is based on NVIDIA's GK104 graphics processor, that introduces the Kepler architecture, is a significant leap forward both in terms of performance and GPU technology. Technically GK104, as its name reveals is an upper mid-range GPU, not a pure high-end part. Following NVIDIA's naming convention such a chip would be called GK100.

 

[Xzibit]

Looks Extreme to me. 960 - 3438, 280X - 3560.

Fully agree. I bet everyone who won't agree that 128bit can deliver performance in 2015 won't agree with this chart.

If Firestrike scores are the only measure heck that 1552mhz run should be enough for a 960 to replace 780s.

The AiBs 750 Ti OC also had similar scores to reference 660s but failed to even keep up with 650 Ti Boost. Out of the 5 W1zzard reviewed only 1 managed to outperform the 650 Ti Boost, which needed a base OC of 182. The 650 Ti Boost was cheeper too at $130 compared to a 750 Ti which ranged from reference $150 - $200.

EDIT:
Didn't even mention the price of the other superior performing products that were in that price window at the time.

Nvidia
660 = $190

AMD
265 = $150
7870 =$190
270X = $200

*The only 750 Ti OC to beat a 650 Ti Boost

 

[HumanSmoke]

If Firestrike scores are the only measure heck that 1552mhz run should be enough for a 960 to replace 780s.

Only if you live in a bizarro world where OC gains equate to real world performance increases. Even the most casual tech reader would realize that OC 'ing becomes a case of diminishing returns.

The AiBs 750 Ti OC also had similar scores to reference 660s

W1zzards MSI GTX750Ti OC fell 17% shy of the 660 in his review. Not that dissimilar to the Firestrike Extreme scores. With the same 4770K, the MSI 750Ti OC scores 2053 while the 660 scores 2282 - a 11% deficit and ballpark considering it is a single benchmark rather than the aggregate of sixteen games.

but failed to even keep up with 650 Ti Boost.

And? W1zzards latest review pegs the 650 Ti Boost at 9.4% faster than the 750 Ti at 19x10, while the Firestrike Extreme pretty much mirrors the same differential with the 650 Ti Boost at 2265 which gives it a 10.3% lift (compared to the 2053 score linked above). That's a whole 0.9% difference between the review and a single benchmark.

Out of the 5 W1zzard reviewed only 1 managed to outperform the 650 Ti Boost, which needed a base OC of 182. The 650 Ti Boost was cheeper too at $130 compared to a 750 Ti which ranged from reference $150 - $200.

Wow, that's a shocker! Never would have guessed that a brand new model would sell at a premium over an outgoing card. You might be imparting worthwhile information except:
1. Not news. For example, the R9 285 produced ~9% less performance than the lower numbered 280X, but was only 4% lower in price.
2. The 750 Ti's price realigned (as did the 285's) once the NEWCARDOMG!!! factor had worn off, to the point where you can buy one for $100, while the aforementioned GTX 660 will set you back $130 (or 30% more cost for ~20% more performance over the 750 Ti), or $120+ for the 650 Ti Boost (that's 20% more cost, 10% more performance to save you having to break out the calculator).

So, no, IMO the 960 won't replace the 780, and Firestrike is a pretty decent indicator of performance - a performance that is predicated upon the clocks, cooling, and system being run.

 

[rruff]

The 650 Ti Boost was cheeper too at $130 compared to a 750 Ti which ranged from reference $150 - $200.

I agree that the 750 Ti is very poor value at the inflated MSRPs, but who buys cards at those prices? You can buy a nice model pretty much any day of the week for $120, and an EVGA SC was $85 on BF. I haven't seen any 650 Ti Boosts for sale lately, at least not for a good price. There have been 660s for $100 or less several times recently. And you can get 650 Ti right now for $60. 750s can normally be had for $80 and I got one for $45 on BF. Those are ~70% faster than a GTX 650, and 5-10% faster than a 650 Ti. The 750 Ti only adds 10-15% in performance over the 750 and isn't worth the >30% typical price premium.

It's all supply and demand and marketing. I expect the 960 price/performance to be unimpressive initially, since it will sell anyway, and once things get settled down, and especially if AMD does something this year, you'll be able to pick up 960s for <$150 in the fall, with at least one dip to the $120 range.

 

[john_]

Fortunately it seems that NVidia will not shoot itself in the foot with the price. Or at least it's not going to shoot both feet.
This latest rumor does look like confirmed as the title says.

Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 Final Pricing Update: MSRP More or Less Confirmed at $200 Retail