Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming 2 GB Review

Name: Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming 2 GB
Brand: GIGABYTE

W1zzard

on Jan 30th, 2015,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: GIGABYTE

(15 Comments) »

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.

GTX 960 Market Segment Analysis
	GeForce GTX 660	GeForce GTX 660 Ti	GeForce GTX 760	GeForce GTX 670	GeForce GTX 960	Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming	Radeon HD 7970	Radeon R9 285	GeForce GTX 770	GeForce GTX 680	Radeon R9 280X	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	GeForce GTX 970
Shader Units	960	1344	1152	1344	1024	1024	2048	1792	1536	1536	2048	2304	2560	1664
ROPs	24	24	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	48	64	64
Graphics Processor	GK106	GK104	GK104	GK104	GM206	GM206	Tahiti	Tonga	GK104	GK104	Tahiti	GK110	Hawaii	GM204
Transistors	2540M	3500M	3500M	3500M	2940M	2940M	4310M	unknown	3500M	3500M	4310M	7100M	6200M	5200M
Memory Size	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB
Memory Bus Width	192 bit	192 bit	256 bit	256 bit	128 bit	128 bit	384 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	384 bit	384 bit	512 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	980 MHz+	915 MHz+	980 MHz+	915 MHz+	1127 MHz+	1241 MHz+	925 MHz	918 MHz	1046 MHz+	1006 MHz+	1000 MHz	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1051 MHz+
Memory Clock	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1753 MHz	1753 MHz	1375 MHz	1375 MHz	1753 MHz	1502 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1750 MHz
Price	$140	$260	$210	$270	$200	$230	$350	$210	$300	$340	$220	$300	$270	$330

Packaging

Package Contents

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
PCIe power cable

The Card

Gigabyte's cooler is black and comes with some etched-in features that break up its flat surfaces. The backplate looks great and comes with similarly structured visual features. Dimensions of the card are 30.0 cm x 11.5 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and three DisplayPorts, a unique output configuration Gigabyte calls "FlexDisplay". Gigabyte put an automatic TMDS switch chip on the board, so you may run 2x DVI, 1x DP and 1x HDMI or 3x DP, 1x DVI and 1x HDMI at the same time. This setup provides additional flexibility while allowing for a triple-monitor-surround gaming setup with a single card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 2.0 compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.

You may combine up to two GTX 960 cards in a multi-GPU SLI configuration. AMD recently switched to transferring CrossFire data via the PCI-Express bus in order to handle 4K frames. NVIDIA's SLI suffers from no such limitations, so there is no reason for NVIDIA to use PCIe.