GTX 960 review compilation thread

[Abula]

Hey steve have you seen any reviews for the MSI GTX960 GAMING 100ME, to what i can tell seems like backplate version, kinda like the copper coloered GTX970, but not sure if anything else changes. But this might be just another way to stand their brand.... lately i don't see more LIGHTNING versions.

[CA_Steve]

Haven't seen any reviews - what I did read led me to believe this is just a promotional version with the Nvidia colors.

[keif]

I did end up picking up the MSI gaming and I'm really happy with it. I did notice a faint buzzing in Counter Strike with the side panel off and the case right next to me but I can't hear it with the side panel on and the case about 3 feet from me. I still need to do more testing with it to see exactly what causes it.

I played Skyrim with 2k textures for a couple of hours and the fans never went above 900 RPM with a max temp of 64 C and a max 86% GPU usage.

My build is pretty much a copy of the holiday mid atx build you guys did (which I'm also really happy with, btw!) except I have no HDD and this card hasn't added any noise to it.

[CA_Steve]

Thanks for the real world feedback!

CS:Go takes very little gpu horsepower. So, the gfx card is spinning at 350fps or something and your monitor is displaying 60Hz. See if you can enable v-sync in the game and if that lowers the buzz. It'll certainly lower the power used/heat/fan rpm.

[keif]

I was going to look into that as I have seen a lot of people reporting buzzing/coil whine with high fps in menus. But this PC is far beyond anything I've ever owned so I've been a bit busy having fun with it.

And you're welcome. I'd probably be completely lost trying to build a quiet PC without you guys so it's the least I can do.

[CA_Steve]

Added Gigabyte G1 @ Hexus

[yakuman]

Gigabyte G1 @ TPU: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Giga ... ng/27.html

[Inehmo]

Anyone have any real experience on the Zotacs? Looking for something small and quiet. There are those "ITX" versions that are ~170mm and with one fan but not sure how quiet those are. Zotacs on the other hand have passive idle and are only 210mm which would fit very nicely in to my Cooltek (Rosewill[Jonsbo]) U3.

Plus the AMP version looks kind of cool with the back plate and all.

[quest_for_silence]

Anyone have any real experience on the Zotacs?

I have bought their base 970 recently: it's very short and light, compared to the ASUS GTX 660 DirectCU-II it replaced, but it's definitely not as quiet as the semi-passive Maxwells: nonetheless it's fairly unobtrusive (until heavy gaming, where the rather small cooler can't cope the heat without revving up substantially the two small fans).
Summarizing, IMO it can be relatively quiet, but not for silencers: I guess the smaller 960 should be better, in this respect, but that's far from certain.

[CA_Steve]

Computer Base expanded their roundup to 8 cards. I kept the original in place and added the 2nd where it fit.

[CA_Steve]

Added Asus Strix @ Hardwareluxx

[CA_Steve]

Added Palit Super Jetstream @ Guru3D.

[CA_Steve]

Added Palit Super Jetstream @ KitGuru.

[CA_Steve]

Roundup at Hardware Info added (Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, Inno3D, EVGA).

[CA_Steve]

Added MSI @ Kitguru.

[NeilBlanchard]

The Zotac 960 my son has is relatively quiet, but in his system, with a Seasonic passive PSU, it squeals when running Folding@Home. Or, at least, something in the system squeals; it could well be the PSU, actually.

[CA_Steve]

Added Inno3D Air Boss @ KitGuru

[Abula]

Im looking for a GTX960 for the HTPC, i was reading the reviews, well most of them, but i stumble on this video from Computer Base Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 – Lautstärke, and the MSI seems much quieter than the Asus, my Asus gtx970 strix are also like this, with mid load they are fine, but full load they can get loud. Either way, im just wondering if the GTX960 will drop in price with the 390X coming soon maybe changing the AMD pricing of their other cards and nvidia reacting..... also heard rummors there will be a GTX960ti soon..... idk, decisions.

[CA_Steve]

Depends on AMD's intro cycle. If they ONLY intro the 390X, then there's no readon to mess with 960 pricing. When AMD gets around to intro'ing their mid-tier 3xx cards, then I expect 960 prices to move and maybe see a 960Ti.

[Oubadah]

I just bought the EVGA ACX 960 and I don't recommend it for quiet builds. In hindsight I probably would have come to that conclusion if I hadn't been lazy about reading all the reviews, and would have purchased another brand.

At first I was dismayed to find the fans constantly spinning up just from running Chrome, but I soon realised that everyone must be using 'Adaptive' power mode in the global/chrome profile. Without that, chrome holds the card in it's maximum power state (1279MHz) and that ensures that the temperature won't stay low enough for consistent passive mode. Even so, I'm a bit underwhelmed because I swear I can remember in one of the videos around launch day that people were saying this card would stay passive even in light gaming, but there no hope in hell of that happening.

So idle/very low loads like web browsing might be OK with Adaptive power management enabled, but what about when the fans inevitably come on? Well to start with, they're pretty shoddy fans, with clear variation between the two (another reason why I don't like these dual fan coolers; it just means you're twice as likely to lose at the fan QC lottery). When they come on at very low RPMs they're OK, but become clearly audible as load increases. At around 33% (or 1100RPM) they hit a certain resonance and combine into a pulsing drone. 33% also happens to be the approximate speed they stabilise at under full load, which is a royal PITA. If you go much higher the drone goes away, but they're still loud.

The EVGA ACX 960 might be one of the less ridiculous looking 960s, but it seems to be inferior when it comes to cooling performance and/or noise. I would return it if I could. I already had a spare blower GTX 780 Ti that I could have used in this build, and this 960 is not sufficiently quieter to justify putting up with 50% less performance than I could have had with the 780 Ti.

[CA_Steve]

Added: EVGA SSC 4GB at Hardwareluxx.

[Oubadah]

I just bought the EVGA ACX 960 and I don't recommend it for quiet builds. In hindsight I probably would have come to that conclusion if I hadn't been lazy about reading all the reviews, and would have purchased another brand.

At first I was dismayed to find the fans constantly spinning up just from running Chrome, but I soon realised that everyone must be using 'Adaptive' power mode in the global/chrome profile. Without that, chrome holds the card in it's maximum power state (1279MHz) and that ensures that the temperature won't stay low enough for consistent passive mode. Even so, I'm a bit underwhelmed because I swear I can remember in one of the videos around launch day that people were saying this card would stay passive even in light gaming, but there no hope in hell of that happening.

So idle/very low loads like web browsing might be OK with Adaptive power management enabled, but what about when the fans inevitably come on? Well to start with, they're pretty shoddy fans, with clear variation between the two (another reason why I don't like these dual fan coolers; it just means you're twice as likely to lose at the fan QC lottery). When they come on at very low RPMs they're OK, but become clearly audible as load increases. At around 33% (or 1100RPM) they hit a certain resonance and combine into a pulsing drone. 33% also happens to be the approximate speed they stabilise at under full load, which is a royal PITA. If you go much higher the drone goes away, but they're still loud.

The EVGA ACX 960 might be one of the less ridiculous looking 960s, but it seems to be inferior when it comes to cooling performance and/or noise. I would return it if I could. I already had a spare blower GTX 780 Ti that I could have used in this build, and this 960 is not sufficiently quieter to justify putting up with 50% less performance than I could have had with the 780 Ti.

I decided to try again, and got the MSI card this time. This one is perfect for quiet builds and outclasses the EVGA SSC in almost every way. The fans are quieter overall, have a smoother signature, operate in a lower RPM bracket, never hit any nasty resonances and stay passive for longer. And despite all this the card runs 10°C cooler under load. There is no variation between fans either. This unit happens to have less coil whine than the SSC, although that doesn't mean anything with a sample size of one.

One downside is that the MSI card is very large and heavy. I'm installing it vertically in a FT05, so it doesn't matter to me, but I wouldn't dream of putting this card in a typical horizontal mount case without some kind of additional support. Most people don't seem to care about this, but I cringe every time I see a photo of someones system with one of these huge cards sagging on an angle.

[CA_Steve]

Added Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming 4GB @ Guru3D.

[Abula]

I just bought the EVGA ACX 960 and I don't recommend it for quiet builds. In hindsight I probably would have come to that conclusion if I hadn't been lazy about reading all the reviews, and would have purchased another brand.

At first I was dismayed to find the fans constantly spinning up just from running Chrome, but I soon realised that everyone must be using 'Adaptive' power mode in the global/chrome profile. Without that, chrome holds the card in it's maximum power state (1279MHz) and that ensures that the temperature won't stay low enough for consistent passive mode. Even so, I'm a bit underwhelmed because I swear I can remember in one of the videos around launch day that people were saying this card would stay passive even in light gaming, but there no hope in hell of that happening.

So idle/very low loads like web browsing might be OK with Adaptive power management enabled, but what about when the fans inevitably come on? Well to start with, they're pretty shoddy fans, with clear variation between the two (another reason why I don't like these dual fan coolers; it just means you're twice as likely to lose at the fan QC lottery). When they come on at very low RPMs they're OK, but become clearly audible as load increases. At around 33% (or 1100RPM) they hit a certain resonance and combine into a pulsing drone. 33% also happens to be the approximate speed they stabilise at under full load, which is a royal PITA. If you go much higher the drone goes away, but they're still loud.

The EVGA ACX 960 might be one of the less ridiculous looking 960s, but it seems to be inferior when it comes to cooling performance and/or noise. I would return it if I could. I already had a spare blower GTX 780 Ti that I could have used in this build, and this 960 is not sufficiently quieter to justify putting up with 50% less performance than I could have had with the 780 Ti.

I decided to try again, and got the MSI card this time. This one is perfect for quiet builds and outclasses the EVGA SSC in almost every way. The fans are quieter overall, have a smoother signature, operate in a lower RPM bracket, never hit any nasty resonances and stay passive for longer. And despite all this the card runs 10°C cooler under load. There is no variation between fans either. This unit happens to have less coil whine than the SSC, although that doesn't mean anything with a sample size of one.

One downside is that the MSI card is very large and heavy. I'm installing it vertically in a FT05, so it doesn't matter to me, but I wouldn't dream of putting this card in a typical horizontal mount case without some kind of additional support. Most people don't seem to care about this, but I cringe every time I see a photo of someones system with one of these huge cards sagging on an angle.

Personally i think a Backplate is a must for heavy cards, Asus seems to be releasing all of them with backplates, and some like MSI are semi following releasing two lines of the same models, i expect next high end gen to have backplates, and mid end probably most of them.

[Oubadah]

Personally i think a Backplate is a must for heavy cards, Asus seems to be releasing all of them with backplates, and some like MSI are semi following releasing two lines of the same models, i expect next high end gen to have backplates, and mid end probably most of them.

The card itself warping is one half of the problem, but strain on the PCI-E slot is is the other half, and backplates will exacerbate the latter by making the card heavier overall. I think the support brackets used in pre-built systems should be standardized across all GPUs and cases. Some cases have proprietary support systems, but they're usually pretty rudimentary.

These aftermarket coolers are terrible because they don't have the mounting holes on the backs of the cards even if you wanted to make your own bracket.

[xan_user]

OT- I think you guys are barking up the wrong tree. new gaming machines should really just be the mobo.... with sockets for adding multiples of GPU, CPU and RAM chips.

[CA_Steve]

The card itself warping is one half of the problem, but strain on the PCI-E slot is is the other half, and backplates will exacerbate the latter by making the card heavier overall. I think the support brackets used in pre-built systems should be standardized across all GPUs and cases. Some cases have proprietary support systems, but they're usually pretty rudimentary.

These aftermarket coolers are terrible because they don't have the mounting holes on the backs of the cards even if you wanted to make your own bracket.

Or, just use some fishing line/cable ties/etc attached to the sag end of the gfx card and a tie point on the case.

[erol]

Review for Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M

[keif]

I have the MSI 960 in an R4 and I didn't think the sag was too bad and it felt quite sturdy when I gave a wiggle. It has a nice brace that runs along the top of the board.





It is a big cooler though. Only 2mm shorter than MSI's 970 twin frozr.

[Aquila]

I thought I'd ask here, I am having trouble fitting a 960 into my Silverstone GD04. I checked lengths carefully only to forget about the added height I need for the PCIe 6 pin power connector on my Asus Strix card. I can't find such a thing as a low profile 6 pin power connector, so I am instead looking for a shorter card, as I can't find a 960 with a power connector on the side instead of top. Does anyone know of a card that would work? If all else fails I may have to get a 760ti instead