R9 380.... buy it over a 960, seriously.

[MattLantis]

The 380 is literally cheaper for more frames.

Fanboy alert.

>calls me a fanboy

>doesn't check my specs

[othertomperson]

First of all - VRAM usage has nothing to do with how powerful the card actually is. I suggest you read @D2ultima 's guide on the subject .

Secondly, the third bench shows a difference of over 10 fps - and that's something I would consider seeing as games will only get more demanding as time goes on. In 2 years, if the 960 is getting 32 fps and the 380 is getting 45 fps - I'd say people who bought a 380 would be much happier than others.

Look at the last image - see the frame time drops with the 2GB cards? Even the 3GB 280 has a drop - the only card that avoids it is the 380 4GB model - when you run out of memory it's not a pleasant thing. Thing is, the 960 doesn't really make good use of the extra memory as it is unable to because of the tiny bus it has. The 380 also has similar compression to that of the 960 but uses a bus that is double the size of the 960. The reason for that is because everyone knows that 2 GB is the bare minimum nowadays - face it. Nvidia have made and will always continue to make cards that are VRAM starved - Look at the 680(770), great card, very good today, but it has too little VRAM to really stay relevant much longer - it has the horsepower but it lacks the VRAM, same for the 670 and the 780 - fact of the matter is that the 960 is an overpriced toy for people who desperately want Nvidia.

 

 

Yeah you're wrong. You can put 8GB in a 950 if you wanted but there'd be no point. Instead of patronisingly telling me to read a guide before going on to contradict yourself, how about you think for a minute? More VRAM is good for bigger textures and higher resolutions. Higher resolutions are out of the question because, contrary to your claim, they do in fact require a more powerful GPU to render in addition to vram, so actually there is a correlation between what tier of GPU you need and how much VRAM makes sense to put in it. Which leaves bigger textures. Bigger textures do not require a more powerful GPU but massive textures on a low resolution display with all other settings at Medium make no sense. You don't particularly benefit from them so there is no point in spending more to get them. If you want higher textures, get the better card entirely and turn all settings up as well as texture resolution.

 

Yes in one game one does better than the other, but both get over 60 fps. Not only is the 960 getting way over 60 fps, though, so it doesn't actually matter in this case, but this is contrary to all of the other evidence which shows that performance between these two cards is very similar. As a result your extrapolation of this one unverified benchmark result to all games -- including ones that aren't even going to be released for two years -- is nonsensical.

 

If the 380 2GB has a frame time increase (a frame time drop would be a good thing, that would signify a higher framerate. You should probably do some basic reading on this and for the love of god learn how to interpret data before seeking to lecture people on the subject) I would expect the 280 to also experience one. The 285 always had better memory performance than the 280 in spite of the smaller bus and less vram because AMD was adopting compression instead of brute force. You almost acknowledge this but then go back to assuming that the 960 is going to be shit because it has a small bus and only 2GB vram. Completely ignoring the technology in the cards designed to use their hardware more efficiently than AMD has traditionally.

 

Nvidia's cards have not been "vram starved". Nvidia have traditionally chosen to compress colour information and clock the memory much higher and use a narrower bus, whereas AMD traditionally have not used compression, clocked the memory slower and compensated with a massive bus. They are two approaches to the same end and the way you are talking about Nvidia shows that you really do not know what these words you are saying actually mean.

 

And will you stop telling me to "face it" about 2GB not being enough when I'm repeatedly saying "get a 970, 290 or 390"? What I am saying is that the 960 and 380 will only usually manage medium to high settings anyway, and so there is no point in worrying about having enough vram to get ultra textures if the rest of your settings need to be so low. If you want higher settings than this, including for textures or higher resolutions, get a higher tier card.

 

Now are you going to find another way to misrepresent my argument or how graphics cards use memory?

 

If you're going to come up with a convoluted response to this and demand me to counter it again can you at least leave out the fanboy bullshit about one of these products being a "toy". It's tiresome and idiotic.

[Tim Drake]

>calls me a fanboy

>doesn't check my specs

Because you need a product of your fanboyism..

 

 

You also had a 980 Ti so.. Why the downgrade?

 

Nvm, mistook you for another PCMR fanboy

[Mikjul]

Yeah you're wrong. You can put 8GB in a 950 if you wanted but there'd be no point. Instead of patronisingly telling me to read a guide before going on to contradict yourself, how about you think for a minute? More VRAM is good for bigger textures and higher resolutions. Higher resolutions are out of the question because, contrary to your claim, they do in fact require a more powerful GPU to render in addition to vram, so actually there is a correlation between what tier of GPU you need and how much VRAM makes sense to put in it. Which leaves bigger textures. Bigger textures do not require a more powerful GPU but massive textures on a low resolution display with all other settings at Medium make no sense. You don't particularly benefit from them so there is no point in spending more to get them. If you want higher textures, get the better card entirely and turn all settings up as well as texture resolution.

 

Yes in one game one does better than the other, but both get over 60 fps. Not only is the 960 getting way over 60 fps, though, so it doesn't actually matter in this case, but this is contrary to all of the other evidence which shows that performance between these two cards is very similar. As a result your extrapolation of this one unverified benchmark result to all games -- including ones that aren't even going to be released for two years -- is nonsensical.

 

If the 380 2GB has a frame time increase (a frame time drop would be a good thing, that would signify a higher framerate. You should probably do some basic reading on this and for the love of god learn how to interpret data before seeking to lecture people on the subject) I would expect the 280 to also experience one. The 285 always had better memory performance than the 280 in spite of the smaller bus and less vram because AMD was adopting compression instead of brute force. You almost acknowledge this but then go back to assuming that the 960 is going to be shit because it has a small bus and only 2GB vram. Completely ignoring the technology in the cards designed to use their hardware more efficiently than AMD has traditionally.

 

Nvidia's cards have not been "vram starved". Nvidia have traditionally chosen to compress colour information and clock the memory much higher and use a narrower bus, whereas AMD traditionally have not used compression, clocked the memory slower and compensated with a massive bus. They are two approaches to the same end and the way you are talking about Nvidia shows that you really do not know what these words you are saying actually mean.

 

And will you stop telling me to "face it" about 2GB not being enough when I'm repeatedly saying "get a 970, 290 or 390"? What I am saying is that the 960 and 380 will only usually manage medium to high settings anyway, and so there is no point in worrying about having enough vram to get ultra textures if the rest of your settings need to be so low. If you want higher settings than this, including for textures or higher resolutions, get a higher tier card.

 

Now are you going to find another way to misrepresent my argument or how graphics cards use memory?

 

If you're going to come up with a convoluted response to this and demand me to counter it again can you at least leave out the fanboy bullshit about one of these products being a "toy". It's tiresome and idiotic.

Both GTX 480 and GTX 580 had too little Vram, these cards were beyond the 6900 series from AMD yet had 512mb less Vram discarding teh 3GB 580.

[D2ultima]

-wall of text including wrong information about vRAM-

I do suggest my guide to you, as you seem to believe texture resolution influences how well a game runs outside of the vRAM drain.

 

Next, I want to pick out a point. The 960 is indeed a card that's named too high for its power. It has a very low core count and its memory bus width is atrociously small. Even with Maxwell's memory optimization, the 160GB/s "sweet spot" I estimate for gaming is entirely unattainable with that card. Hell, if you managed to force its memory clock speeds to 8GHz effective, you'd JUST be hitting the memory bandwidth of a GTX 660Ti (taking into account Maxwell's memory optimizations). And as we all know, 7GHz is close to the limit for GDDR5, and it's nowhere near guaranteed to be able to hit that. Considering the entire maxwell GPU line, that card is in fact overpriced and not worthy of being so far up its gaming line. At best I'd push that as a 950Ti, and there should be a 960 at least matching the GTX 970M's specs; a 192-bit mem bus and 1280 cores instead of 1024.

 

The 960's problem is that it can run into memory bandwidth issues in games whose design or resolution exceed what its memory bandwidth can handle, and while you don't see it a whole lot, it CAN indeed happen. There are games that use the living daylight out of memory bandwidth and not your vRAM count (like Crysis 1) due to some limitation or other.

[Shoob]

I've been wondering why does the 960 have an empty memory chip slot in it's PCB:

 

 

Did Nvidia had the intention to release the 960 as a 3GB GPU? It probably wouldn't have been possible to keep the 128 bit bus, but a 960 with 3GB and 192 bit bus would have been far more interesting and it could have forced AMD to release a fully unlocked Tonga GPU.

[MattLantis]

Because you need a product of your fanboyism..

 

 

You also had a 980 Ti so.. Why the downgrade?

 

Nvm, mistook you for another PCMR fanboy

Well, being a fanboy usually entails buying their product and supporting them, so yeah

[D2ultima]

I've been wondering why does the 960 have an empty memory chip slot in it's PCB:

 

Did Nvidia had the intention to release the 960 as a 3GB GPU? It probably wouldn't have been possible to keep the 128 bit bus, but a 960 with 3GB and 192 bit bus would have been far more interesting and it could have forced AMD to release a fully unlocked Tonga GPU.

It's probably that they cut down the 970M more. As in my post, 970M is 1280 cores, 192-bit mem bus. 960/965M share the same framework; 1024 cores and 128-bit mem bus, except that the 965M is considered "GM204" and the 960 is considered "GM206".

[Mikjul]

I've been wondering why does the 960 have an empty memory chip slot in it's PCB:

 

 

Did Nvidia had the intention to release the 960 as a 3GB GPU? It probably wouldn't have been possible to keep the 128 bit bus, but a 960 with 3GB and 192 bit bus would have been far more interesting and it could have forced AMD to release a fully unlocked Tonga GPU.

That's interesting.

[Mikjul]

Perhaps the 960Ti will be the 192 3GB one?

[don_svetlio]

Perhaps the 960Ti will be the 192 3GB one?

But it will likely be overpriced and then the 380X (assuming it happens) would still be a better option since a fully unlocked Tonga would be 384-bit and probably 3 and 6 Gig configs.

[8uhbbhu8]

if you get a card with a good enough cooler and your power supply can handle it theirs no point in using the heat and power argument. Also 38w draw doesnt really matter that much its a tiny amount and generally any power supply you get now a days to go in the kind of rig either card would be used in should easily be able handle 38w more draw. you should never get a supply that is marginally over the total power requirement of your rig anyway. Thats just asking for problems like burned out power supplies.

[TheConverter]

Because you need a product of your fanboyism..

 

 

You also had a 980 Ti so.. Why the downgrade?

 

Nvm, mistook you for another PCMR fanboy

 

When are you gonna stop hating on PCMR, did they ban you from the subreddit or what?

[Tim Drake]

When are you gonna stop hating on PCMR, did they ban you from the subreddit or what?

Who wouldn't hate on them? They're stuck up idiots on that subreddit lmao

[D2ultima]

Who wouldn't hate on them? They're stuck up idiots on that subreddit lmao

There's a decent few people there that are decent, but a whole lot of them who are so ignorant and so adamant about their ignorance >_>.

 

I got downvoted to hell because I said that a user on a forum was only talking about nVidia GPUs in laptops because AMD hasn't had a new laptop card since the 7970M, as the 8970M/M290X were both rebrands, and thus not even worth considering. Like... I stated a fact. How does that incur hate?

[Tim Drake]

There's a decent few people there that are decent, but a whole lot of them who are so ignorant and so adamant about their ignorance >_>.

 

I got downvoted to hell because I said that a user on a forum was only talking about nVidia GPUs in laptops because AMD hasn't had a new laptop card since the 7970M, as the 8970M/M290X were both rebrands, and thus not even worth considering. Like... I stated a fact. How does that incur hate?

Don't even get me started on the whole of reddit disliking something just because they don't agree.

 

Fucking stupid

[MattLantis]

Who wouldn't hate on them? They're stuck up idiots on that subreddit lmao

So you're hating on me on a generalization that the subreddit is a bunch of asshole. Even though I don't go on Reddit, almost ever.... 

[TheConverter]

Who wouldn't hate on them? They're stuck up idiots on that subreddit lmao

 

Yeah, what a bunch of assholes

 

 

[Tim Drake]

You won't be given 1550mhz on every card as well it's pure luck, but the 960 stock is incredibly high clocked... it has very little headroom.

lmao you clearly know a lot about 960s..

 

oh w8

 

[Ostwind]

You won't be given 1550mhz on every card as well it's pure luck, but the 960 stock is incredibly high clocked... it has very little headroom.

Very little headroom....

 

Right....so if that's the case then what's the odds that both of the 960's that I have can do 1600/8350? I'm no expert on numbers but I don't think this counts as "very little headroom"

[Tim Drake]

 

[Mikjul]

Salt.

 

May it be eaten and spread.