NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Specs Confirmed

[HumanSmoke]

But do those things increase vram requirements *more* than the cards computing requirements?

It's not a case of either/or. GPU processing and vRAM increases are linked. If a GPU has power but it is hamstrung by a lack of framebuffer, what good is the GPU gain? Likewise, why push games that require more vRAM if the GPUs aren't able to run the settings to take advantage of it.
As it stands now, both AMD and Nvidia's gaming programs push the software to a point where the game at its maximum quality/resolution levels is around two generations of GPUs removed from the ability to play them with a single GPU. This is not by accident. Having the games outstrip the cards ability ensures a market for SLI/Crossfire.

Will we need larger amounts of vram even on slow cards?

Nothing extreme. Larger framebuffers are as much a marketing tool as a requirement. As I said before, there is always the option of dialling down image quality and/or playing at a lower resolution...and as should be apparent, not every game is a GPU-killing resource hog and the console market dictates to a large degree how much graphics horsepower is required.
As a trend will memory capacity get larger? Of course, unless you expect the quality of gaming images and the game environment to remain unchanged. If you'd followed up any of the links I pointed you towards, the message is pretty clear - the resources to make gaming more realistic are available, but one of the biggest stumbling blocks to implementation (aside from consolitis) is memory capacity and bandwidth. Read though any next-gen 3D article or paper and count how often the words memory/bandwidth limitation (or similar) pop up.

Not necessarily... because the 960 is the fastest new card to come out that still uses 2GB of vram. I've been looking at some the reports where the specs are listed, and the comments are overwhelmingly of this variety "This card is an immediate fail with 2GB, games need 4GB, Nvidia are idiots, shouldn't cost more than $100, it's already obsolete, I feel sorry for anyone dumb enough to buy it" etc. I tend to think that Nvidia knows what they are doing and the card will be balanced and perform well, but I seem to be in the minority.

This is the internet. Your choice as to what to take on board and what to leave aside. People who aim broadsides at a vendor usually have some weird attachment to another brand. The view from the other side of the fence isn't much dissimilar - "Don't buy Radeon their drivers suck, their support sucks" etc. Filter the opinion and question and evaluate the fact. The fun part is separating out the comments that are opinion (or trolling/shilling) that masquerade as fact....but on one ever said the quest for knowledge was easy.

 

[rtwjunkie]

New games in 2015 will cost 2GB or more vram @720p.There were several games cost more than 2GB vram @1080p already last year.

Read up, and read the other 960 thread. It's not looking like it. RCoon is doing an in depth test. Some of you guys are way too pessimistic. Despite what you think, 2GB cards are not really using all their RAM at 1080p. Not even close on most of them.

And welcome to TPU!

 

[mxp02]

Read up, and read the other 960 thread. It's not looking like it. RCoon is doing an in depth test. Some of you guys are way too pessimistic. Despite what you think, 2GB cards are not really using all their RAM at 1080p. Not even close on most of them.

And welcome to TPU!

I'm pretty sure if you want to run games which look better than those in 2014 at 1080p high(not highest) smoothly(avg 50fps+ min 30fps maybe minor lag/stutter) this year,a card like GTX780 3GB is required.For highest setting 1080p~1440p,very smooth(min 50fps) a full size maxwell(maybe 990ti) is requried.

 

[rtwjunkie]

I'm pretty sure if you want to run games which look better than those in 2014 at 1080p high(not highest) smoothly(avg 50fps+ min 30fps maybe minor lag/stutter) this year,a card like GTX780 3GB is required.For highest setting 1080p~1440p,very smooth(min 50fps) a full size maxwell(maybe 990ti) is requried.

You are missing the whole point of this card. It's meant to be affordable part of an affordable build. It's meant to be "pretty good" graphics-wise. There have always been very affordable models that will not play everything at max.

And thay's ok! Those are the volume models that bring people into pc gaming because that's all they can afford, giving them a fairly decent experience. These are where the money is at for both companies.

 

[64K]

You are missing the whole point of this card. It's meant to be affordable part of an afgordable build. It's meant to be "pretty good" graphics-wise. There have always been very affordable models that will not play everything at max.

And thay's ok! Those are the volume models that bring people into pc gaming because that's all they can afford, giving them a fairly decent experience. These are where the money is at for both companies.

I'm jumping the gun a bit (need to wait for W1zard's review) but I think this GTX 960, if priced at $200, will be a very nice GPU for 1080p gaming. No, it won't do ultra settings on every game but I think it will deliver solid performance at that price point.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

To put this simple coz there are some who just can't get the full picture... the GTX960 fills the gap where buying a $350 video card proves too much for the majority of PC gamers who dun have the money & wanted a decent card that runs all their fave games at High with no AA on 1920x1080 comfortably without compromise. It's sub-$200 price tag IS VERY competitive, it's performance is also very competitive for it's class & best of all; it doesn't really kill you wallet/pocket. It's now considered as the best bang for your buck VGA card, just like the GTX760 when it came out back in June 2013. Remember... there are folks who wanted good performance across 1080p resolutions while keeping a decent level of eye candy without spending much is key.

 

[rruff]

The price of $200 is looking more solid. For an Asus Strix also, which is not a cheap model: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-msrp-200/

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

ASUS Strix variant is quite on the expensive side IMO. If you want the really affordable card aim for either EVGA, Leadtek or Gigabyte as they offer their cards at a much better price, but depends on availability.

 

[mxp02]

You are missing the whole point of this card. It's meant to be affordable part of an affordable build. It's meant to be "pretty good" graphics-wise. There have always been very affordable models that will not play everything at max.

And thay's ok! Those are the volume models that bring people into pc gaming because that's all they can afford, giving them a fairly decent experience. These are where the money is at for both companies.

No,not me,I didn't and won't want everything max out on this card.1080p gaming 60fps at high settings is what they said in the official ppt which looks kinda overrated as always.Just suppose the ppt is not exaggerated,then read the tiny remarks below carefully ,those games were relesed in 2014 even 2013.Will this card be able to maintain 1080p gaming 60fps high settings in 2015?In my opinion,no way this gonna happen.What about 50 fps without severe lag/stutter?I seriouly doubt that.

 

[rtwjunkie]

No,not me,I didn't and won't want everything max out on this card.1080p gaming 60fps at high settings is what they said in the official ppt which looks kinda overrated as always.Just suppose the ppt is not exaggerated,then read the tiny remarks below carefully ,those games were relesed in 2014 even 2013.Will this card be able to maintain 1080p gaming 60fps high settings in 2015?In my opinion,no way this gonna happen.What about 50 fps without severe lag/stutter?I seriouly doubt that.

You're right, but it's not meant to be "future game proof." It's meant to provide the VAST majority of people who game on average hardware and who expect to replace a mid-grade card every year. And those people are just fine with how they play, with 20 up to 60 fps. 30 is still pretty darned playable.

 

[rruff]

You're right, but it's not meant to be "future game proof."

Serious gamers must be a small % of the market. More are probably about like me... don't game all that much, and are ok with getting games that are a few years old that are almost free, and thoroughly patched and modded. If I was spending $500/yr on games, then sure it would make sense to spend a similar amount on hardware, but I don't. I bet Nvidia will sell a lot more 960s than 980s, and a lot more 750s than 960s. With a 750 you can play most 2014 games well enough, and one 2014 title (Divinity Original Sin) I have everything on Ultra, 1080p and it's 30-60 fps.

The 960 is half a GTX 980 (Nvidia's top card) and 2x a GTX 750 (bottom of the "gaming" range), so it seems pretty "midrange" to me. If it gets cheap by next BF it will be a big upgrade, but currently I'm not lusting after anything that my 750 can't handle.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Serious gamers must be a small % of the market. More are probably about like me... don't game all that much, and are ok with getting games that are a few years old that are almost free, and thoroughly patched and modded. If I was spending $500/yr on games, then sure it would make sense to spend a similar amount on hardware, but I don't. I bet Nvidia will sell a lot more 960s than 980s, and a lot more 750s than 960s. With a 750 you can play most 2014 games well enough, and one 2014 title (Divinity Original Sin) I have everything on Ultra, 1080p and it's 30-60 fps.

The 960 is half a GTX 980 (Nvidia's top card) and 2x a GTX 750 (bottom of the "gaming" range), so it seems pretty "midrange" to me. If it gets cheap by next BF it will be a big upgrade, but currently I'm not lusting after anything that my 750 can't handle.

You are quite correct! Serious gamers, or those that buy top-end hardware are only a small percentage of the market. Most are like you and quite content with average, but still worthwhile performance.

You are exactly the kind of person Nvidia is marketing the 960 to. Cheers!

 

[Octavean]

Any word about video decoding options, tegra x1 has full h265/vp9 deocoding. Really hope this has too.

Reviews I have been skimming seem to indicate HEVC / H.265 encode and decode support for the GTX 960.

 

[Xzibit]

Reviews I have been skimming seem to indicate HEVC / H.265 encode and decode support for the GTX 960.

Yes, Limited to 8-bit or lower.

 

[Nabarun]

Apparently there's gonna be a 4GB variant of this card (from JJ's overview). I wonder if that's gonna make any difference to the 1080p segment. Anyway, please stop calling it a "$200 card", because it's not. Not here in India at least. Here all the 960s are priced around USD 300. Price/performance wise that's where I see the R9s winning. Although, cost of electricity being equally high here in this hell hole, we're f*cked both ways

 

[HumanSmoke]

Anyway, please stop calling it a "$200 card", because it's not. Not here in India at least. Here all the 960s are priced around USD 300

Well, you call it a $300 card, and everyone else who lives in a country where it is $200 can call it a $200 card. Would that make you feel better?

I could say exactly the same thing about the R9 285 ( $NZ415 or $US311 with free delivery! w00t), but I am well aware that my local pricing doesn't reflect that of the majority of markets.

 

[rruff]

Anyway, please stop calling it a "$200 card", because it's not.

You... well maybe not you, but those of us in the US can choose from several at Newegg, ~$180 shipped on day one. So I call it a $180 card, and that will likely decline further very soon.

 

[Nabarun]

Well, I rest my case. It's priced <= USD 200 in the US ONLY - not anywhere else in the world. So stop putting a false price tag on it.

 

[HumanSmoke]

Well, I rest my case. It's priced <= USD 200 in the US ONLY - not anywhere else in the world. So stop putting a false price tag on it.

In a lot of cases that comes down to import tax structure of the countries concerned and how the AIB's allot initial shipments to the various geographic distribution areas. Even with 19% tax, these German/Austrian sellers have the cards at nowhere near $US300, and the R9 285 isn't any cheaper.

 

[Nabarun]

Well, I appreciate your time in the market research. Here the tax rates are ABNORMALLY high. But the extremities are around 30% only. And If you are really interested about the current prices, look at my earlier post, ... or THIS.

"Import tax structure"

And, just to remind you, read btarunr's last 2 lines in his 960 sli review.