A proper test of the 4GB vs 2GB GTX 960 from gamersnexus

[Suika]

its really not for anyone...

"I don't have a use for it, so obviously it shouldn't exist."

 

Just because you're unimaginative and boring doesn't mean something is useless, Jesus Christ. No, the card is useful to the right people in the right scenario. If you can't find a reason, you're just fanboying AMD honestly.

 

CUDA for a budget rendering machine, JayzTwoCents just built one.

 

HTPC machine. Yea, a small case with a smaller PSU might not be able to fit or power an R9 280X. Yes, the R9 285 would work, but the 960 uses less power and produces even less heat at the same cost. The 960 is a good option, the 285 might be too depending on what you want.

 

Budget mITX lan build. Basically an HTPC, what if you want something small, cool, portable and on a budget?

 

Am I saying you should always go with the GTX 960? Oh hell no, especially if the 290 is only $30 more, but there are situations where a 290 is not a good option, and the 960 is. 

[AlexWJD]

Lock the doors, barricade the windows, the 960 hate train is coming! Choo choo motherfuckers!

[SteveGrabowski]

 

there are situations where a 290 is not a good option, and the 960 is. 

 

 

That's definitely true, for example, in low budget i3 gaming builds I almost always recommend the 960 if it can fit into the budget over the 750 Ti, since AMD driver overhead seems to swamp dual cores (but not quadcores, which is why the 290 is awesome then). And now I'll definitely recommend the 4GB 960 in some of these situations since it appears GM 206 is able to use the extra memory well, killing off one of the biggest complaints people have had about the card. When I made my statement about the 960 not making sense over the 290 I was making an implicit assumption about the audience here though, that mostly people here care about gaming performance first and have a strong enough CPU to run a 290. Probably a bad assumption on second thought since there are a lot of i3, Pentium, and AMD APU builds here.

[Suika]

When I made my statement about the 960 not making sense over the 290 I was making an implicit assumption about the audience here, that mostly people here care about gaming performance first and have a quadcore to run a 290.

And honestly that's all I'm saying. The 290 is better, especially at $30 more, but the 960 does have a use as a video card. I would pick the 290 if it were my gaming desktop, where I don't care as much about size and thermals. If I were building an HTPC, I'd pick up a 960, assuming I'm limited to a budget.

[SteveGrabowski]

And honestly that's all I'm saying. The 290 is better, especially at $30 more, but the 960 does have a use as a video card. I would pick the 290 if it were my gaming desktop, where I don't care as much about size and thermals. If I were building an HTPC, I'd pick up a 960, assuming I'm limited to a budget.

 

Crap, sorry, I edited my post a bit after you quoted it.

[GoodN1ght]

 

Right, so because you don't care about how this affects SLI/CF, and AMD and Nvidia should innovate only according to your whims. I couldn't play Tomb Raider this summer because my old GPUs were throttling eachother because of ambient temperature that they were in turn exacerbating. It's a serious problem, and a big reason that 290Xs in CF were off the table for me when I upgraded.

 

In this post you have conflated power consumption, TDP and temperature as being all the same thing. You also don't seem to get that you're talking about using a performance-orientated GPU from years ago as a low-mid GPU now. Go on, stick a GTX 580 in a HP Pavilion to give it an extra lease of life. Never mind that it's got a cheap-arse 300W PSU in it. These are meant to be budget products, not performance. Power consumption, especially in budget markets, is incredibly important. I shouldn't have to point out to you that my Extreme Edition CPU is not a budget product. It's a completely different section of the market with drastically different requirements. Which is precisely why using this CPU in five years time as a budget mid-range component would be completely wrong.

 

Besides that it isn't running at 4.7GHz and 1.46V all the time. Most of the time it downclocks itself to 1.2GHz and 0.8V, because I really don't need that level of performance all of the time.

 

 

 

OK, in three months time when you literally cannot get a 290 any more, and the 960 is still £150, do tell me how exactly I'm supposed to go out and get a brand new 290.

 

It's not poor reasoning, it's exactly why the 960 is priced the way it is. It isn't competing with the 290 for this reason.

 

You people need to realize how small a 100W difference is on your power bill. It might be a couple of dollars a YEAR. MIGHT be. 

Modern computers drain far less energy than the vast majority of your appliances.

A fucking microwave is 1200W +.  Granted it doesn't run all day but your crockpot or oven might. 

[Megahurt]

Because the 290 is at the end of its life and so won't be available for long. The 960, however, has only just been launched so has a good 17 months left.

So the only reason to get the 960 is to be able to SLI down the road, which the vast majority of people will not do. I can't think of any technology that the 290 doesn't support, and the price to performance is great, for most people, it's the better buy.

[SteveGrabowski]

I like this guy.  He knows his shit.  He's smart enough to use 1% lowest frames and not minimum framerate.

Yeah, I subscribed to the channel after seeing this. I love that Tom's Hardware and Eurogamer are incorporating these kind of smoothness metrics too in their reviews.

[Swndlr]

 

"I don't have a use for it, so obviously it shouldn't exist."

 

Just because you're unimaginative and boring doesn't mean something is useless, Jesus Christ. No, the card is useful to the right people in the right scenario. If you can't find a reason, you're just fanboying AMD honestly.

 

CUDA for a budget rendering machine, JayzTwoCents just built one.

 

HTPC machine. Yea, a small case with a smaller PSU might not be able to fit or power an R9 280X. Yes, the R9 285 would work, but the 960 uses less power and produces even less heat at the same cost. The 960 is a good option, the 285 might be too depending on what you want.

 

Budget mITX lan build. Basically an HTPC, what if you want something small, cool, portable and on a budget?

 

Am I saying you should always go with the GTX 960? Oh hell no, especially if the 290 is only $30 more, but there are situations where a 290 is not a good option, and the 960 is. 

 

gimme a scenario where the card would be more useful

[Suika]

gimme a scenario where the card would be more useful

Uhh... I just gave three.

[Swndlr]

Uhh... I just gave three.

cuda, sure thats fair

htpc, pls ffs if youre going for an htpc youre gonna squeeze as much as you can out of it anyway, if getting a slightly larger tower and slightly higher capacity is a real iss- wtf what am i saying, thats not an issue.

lan build? most mitx cases can fit normal size gpus, if you mess that up, you planned poorly.

[Suika]

htpc, pls ffs if youre going for an htpc youre gonna squeeze as much as you can out of it anyway, if getting a slightly larger tower and slightly higher capacity is a real iss- wtf what am i saying, thats not an issue.

Size can be an issue, but if you're not creative I can see why it might not be.

 

 

LOOK HOW FRIGGIN TINY THAT IS. That can fit in more places than the R9 290.

 

lan build? most mitx cases can fit normal size gpus, if you mess that up, you planned poorly.

Asides from what I said above, there's also the issue of airflow. The R9 290 needs lots of it, the 960 needs quite a bit less. You can sacrifice airflow and make a more dead silent PC with the 960 than you could the R9 290.

 

The Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X is probably one of the most quiet coolors on the AMD, and that thing is huge (albeit sexy and a beast). The 960 can have a 0% fan curve.

[alphaproject]

2x post. Dumb.

[alphaproject]

Well....this has been interesting. Funny to see a guy who just won't see any other perspective and a guy who bails out at a good time.

 

I've seen some reviews on why the 960 is useless. Basically being direct comparisons to the 760 and 770 and then comparing the 960 to the R 290 is even worse.

 

Now I understand the "960" is NEW so it will be supported longer theory. But... even old cards have video support so I don't fully agree NEW is better theory personally.

 

In fact Nvidia seems to bank on New is better even though it's not many times. Well...AMD does it as well. Both are guilty of that. I don't think the 7970 and 280X had enough differences. It wasn't like the 6870 vs 7850. THAT was a big difference.

 

There are so many choices at $200-230 that the 960 seems to be bought only by newbs. Which is fine.

So many cards I'd rather have than the 960. 

 

Used 770

used 780

New R290

 

3 Cards that blow it away. I don't care if the card is bought in the store brand new as long as it works.

 

I'm glad they made a 4 Gb version though because Vram should be at least 3-4 Gb now. It's just not a good budget version of Maxwell at that price. If it was $150 and $180 then yes....it will be worth buying.

[Suika]

3 Cards that blow it away. I don't care if the card is bought in the store brand new as long as it works.

Not everybody is OK with used actually.

[alphaproject]

What is wrong with a used GPU if it's only a few months old? Even 1 year isn't that old. I'd actually prefer a used GPU because it's been tried and tested. Usually if a card is bad, you noticed problems right away.

 

AMD cards buy new because better value. Nvidia I usually get 2nd hand.

[Swndlr]

Size can be an issue, but if you're not creative I can see why it might not be.

 

 

LOOK HOW FRIGGIN TINY THAT IS. That can fit in more places than the R9 290.

 

 

Asides from what I said above, there's also the issue of airflow. The R9 290 needs lots of it, the 960 needs quite a bit less. You can sacrifice airflow and make a more dead silent PC with the 960 than you could the R9 290.

 

The Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X is probably one of the most quiet coolors on the AMD, and that thing is huge (albeit sexy and a beast). The 960 can have a 0% fan curve.

then youre sacrificing performance, which is the reason you buy a high end card.

[Faceman]

You people need to realize how small a 100W difference is on your power bill. It might be a couple of dollars a YEAR. MIGHT be. 

Modern computers drain far less energy than the vast majority of your appliances.

A fucking microwave is 1200W +.  Granted it doesn't run all day but your crockpot or oven might. 

100W difference in the U.S., assuming an average cost of energy at 12 cents per Kwh, and using the machine for 2 hours a day, 365 a year is $12.

[Circs]

Can anyone be arsed to talk about the actually interesting results of the 4GB framebuffer on the 960? It looks like it has the potential to markedly improve the experience by smoothing out the roughest dips quite markedly. Combined with G-SYNC (not that those monitors are really affordable yet) it actually makes a pretty compelling case for the increased VRAM. I wonder what an FCAT benchmark would look like on that card.

 

Nah, forget that! Let's have a slapflight about this card vs the 290 that leads nowhere.

[othertomperson]

There you go throwing the hissy fit. I said it wasn't necessarily a bad thing because you get driver support for a GPU they're currently selling (even if it is under another name) even when it's old. E.g., if you bought a 7970 three years ago it was a great deal since they're still selling the 280x and thus still optimizing for it in their drivers. So based on past history, if you buy a 290 or 290x now you're likely not going to be abandoned by the driver team for a while, since they're still going to want to sell Hawaii chips and still need those to do well in benchmarks. For someone concerned with performance for his dollar that's more compelling than the other card uses 100W less power, I guess unless you're someone gaming 8 hours a day.

 

Right because anyone who isn't just kissing your arse on a discussion forum is throwing a hissy fit. Newsflash: forums are about discussion.

 

But that's the case anyway. Nvidia support their old GPUs regardless of if they're rebranded into the next generation or not, I don't see why the same shouldn't be expected of AMD. You're pretty much saying that AMD drivers only support their most recent line of products, which is abysmal and should be reason to never spend money on their stuff, not taken as them throwing you a bone.

 

I don't live in the USA. See the Location thing on the miniprofile to the left? (That means this way <--). Outside the US we actually pay for energy. Holy shit, I know it's a bizarre concept. But going from two 580s to two 970s is noticeably cheaper. This is one in a long list that you've ignored so I'm not going to bother copying and pasting again (it's on the last page) of issues with power consumption and heat generation.

 

Look you can sit here and defend releasing three new products in as many years. You can think this is acceptable or good, or sit here with your GTX 480 frying some eggs while playing games on medium because this is how budget gaming should be (but only in winter because throttling), or you could understand that the point I'm making is that innovation is a good thing. You are literally arguing against companies innovating and releasing new things. At least that's the impression I get between you spewing ad hominems and mental health slurs, I could be wrong? It seems like your having problems at your end.

 

I'm not sure why people are even comparing it to the 290 either. It costs nearly £100 more. Even now they're not remotely the same price point.

[SteveGrabowski]

Right because anyone who isn't just kissing your arse on a discussion forum is throwing a hissy fit. Newsflash: forums are about discussion.

 

But that's the case anyway. Nvidia support their old GPUs regardless of if they're rebranded into the next generation or not, I don't see why the same shouldn't be expected of AMD. You're pretty much saying that AMD drivers only support their most recent line of products, which is abysmal and should be reason to never spend money on their stuff, not taken as them throwing you a bone.

 

I don't live in the USA. See the Location thing on the miniprofile to the left? (That means this way <--). Outside the US we actually pay for energy. Holy shit, I know it's a bizarre concept. But going from two 580s to two 970s is noticeably cheaper. This is one in a long list that you've ignored so I'm not going to bother copying and pasting again (it's on the last page) of issues with power consumption and heat generation.

 

Look you can sit here and defend releasing three new products in as many years. You can think this is acceptable or good, or sit here with your GTX 480 frying some eggs while playing games on medium because this is how budget gaming should be (but only in winter because throttling), or you could understand that the point I'm making is that innovation is a good thing. You are literally arguing against companies innovating and releasing new things. At least that's the impression I get between you spewing ad hominems and mental health slurs, I could be wrong? It seems like your having problems at your end.

 

I'm not sure why people are even comparing it to the 290 either. It costs nearly £100 more. Even now they're not remotely the same price point.

 

People compare it because you can get R9 290s for $50 more than the 960 in the US. Do you game for 8 hours a day? Is that why you're acting so whiny about the power difference? It's funny watching you give me a raft of shit and tell me we should all care about your SLI setup and if I say I don't care about it all of a sudden I'm telling Nvidia how to make their GPUs. I don't care if AMD doesn't want to make new cards for midrange and lower end products. I'd rather they spent their R&D budget just on the higher end GPUs. Because once again, I don't run a laptop and I don't give a shit about power consumption. Power consumption is targeted at the mobile world, and AMD has punted on that for now.

[othertomperson]

People compare it because you can get R9 290s for $50 more than the 960 in the US. Do you game for 8 hours a day? Is that why you're acting so whiny about the power difference? It's funny watching you give me a raft of shit and tell me we should all care about your SLI setup and if I say I don't care about it all of a sudden I'm telling Nvidia how to make their GPUs. I don't care if AMD doesn't want to make new cards for midrange and lower end products. I'd rather they spent their R&D budget just on the higher end GPUs. Because once again, I don't run a laptop and I don't give a shit about power consumption. Power consumption is targeted at the mobile world, and AMD has punted on that for now.

 

I'm not being "whiny", it was asked why this product exists and why people care about new budget products being released and you've spent four pages whinging that none of it applies to you. Well boo fucking hoo, Buy a performance product if that's what you want. I really don't get this mentality of "I want the most performance product that exists, and therefore nothing else should." Like there are other use cases besides your own?

 

But apparently using a product in a slightly different scenario to you is "whining" and "throwing a hissy fit". It's no less bizarre than it was two pages ago that you are essentially crying over other people using SLI/CF and wanting to game in summer without issue because these aren't issues that you have as someone who doesn't use more than one GPU.

[SteveGrabowski]

I'm not being "whiny", it was asked why this product exists and why people care about new budget products being released and you've spent four pages whinging that none of it applies to you. Well boo fucking hoo, Buy a performance product if that's what you want. I really don't get this mentality of "I want the most performance product that exists, and therefore nothing else should." Like there are other use cases besides your own?

 

But apparently using a product in a slightly different scenario to you is "whining" and "throwing a hissy fit". It's no less bizarre than it was two pages ago that you are essentially crying over other people using SLI/CF and wanting to game in summer without issue because these aren't issues that you have as someone who doesn't use more than one GPU.

 

It's good you dodged the part about R9 290s being cheap in the US.

[othertomperson]

It's good you dodged the part about R9 290s being cheap in the US.

 

It's clear that you're a five year old arguing for the sake of arguing.

[SteveGrabowski]

It's clear that you're a five year old arguing for the sake of arguing.

 

Who would ever want a performance part on deep discount?