GTX 960 rumors

[rruff]

Looks like it is semi official now. The base GTX 960 model will have a 128bit bus, and 2GB of vram.

http://www.techpowerup.com/208618/msi-geforce-gtx-960-graphics-cards-leaked.html

I haven't seen any mention of the shader count, but if you assume that Nvidia wants to slot this in between the 760 and 770, then that would be ~50% of the 980... or 1024. That matches up with the memory bandwidth also being cut in half relative to the 980. So there won't be any weird bottlenecks due to the bus and ram quantity, unless you also believe that the 980 suffers from bottlenecks. Note the 960 is spec'd with similar fast ram (7Ghz) also.

A retail price of just over $200 makes sense IMO. It will compete with the R9 280 and 285 on performance and price, while drawing much less power.

Most likely a Ti model and possibly even a 3rd 960 will debut in a short time, with one of them being a cut down GM204. At least the guy who posted the chart below seems to think so.

http://techgadgetnews.com/2014/12/3...nts-upto-1536-cuda-cores-benchmarks-revealed/

The "benchmarks" are just a guess, but probably pretty close.

With the base 960 being this low end, that would put it at ~70% faster than a 750 Ti. Still a substantial gap. I've seen no solid rumors about a 950 or 950 Ti, but I think Nvidia needs at least one and maybe two 9 series cards to populate that space. Probably a few months off though.

 

[Blue-Knight]

I am waiting for GT 940, if it follows the same naming scheme of the past... LOL!

Let's hope 4GB versions will be made for the GTX 960.

But people are complaining about the 128-bit bus width!? I don't think that will be a reason not to buy it after all.

 

[rruff]

I am waiting for GT 940

You can buy a 940 now!... aka GTX 750.... maybe. It wouldn't surprise me if Nvidia tweaks the 750 Ti a bit for better performance, and calls that the GTX 950, but they still need at least one model between that and the 960.

3 or 4 GB versions of the base GTX 960 will surely come out, to satisfy those who *think* it will matter. And of course if you SLI then >2GB will be helpful.

 

[Devon68]

GTX***Ti (1536SP). I wont like it if they call this the GTX960Ti. It cant be faster than a GTX770 let alone a gtx 780. If they called it the GTX970Ti then ok, but even that wouldn't make any sense because the 970 has 1664 shader units..

 

[rruff]

GTX***Ti (1536SP). I wont like it if they call this the GTX960Ti. It cant be faster than a GTX770 let alone a gtx 780. If they called it the GTX970Ti then ok, but even that wouldn't make any sense because the 970 has 1664 shader units..

Yes, it's a weird one. 960 Ti Boost, maybe? Obviously that would be a cut down GM204. Based on shaders alone it wouldn't be much slower than a 970, but Nvidia could give it lower clocks to slow it down a little more. Makes sense I guess if they have a lot of GM204 chips they can use.

For perspective, here is the current order:

 

[Blue-Knight]

You can buy a 940 now!... aka GTX 750.... maybe.

WHAT!?

Going to buy a GT 740 in this case... Then buy a GT 940 when the 1000 series equivalent launches.

That way I can save money.

I cannot afford the GTX 750 price tag here, which is a bit contradictory because the price I would pay for the GT 740 in my country I could buy a GTX 750 Ti in the USA. LOL!

 

[rruff]

Going to buy a GT 740 in this case.

Don't want to veer too far off topic, but just make sure it's a GDDR5 model. Or get a GTX 650, same thing. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-740/specifications

Nvidia's GT lineup is a total mess of odd combinations. Cards that have the same name might have chips spanning generations, with shaders, rops, tmus, memory bandwidth, power consumption and performance all over the map. You need to be careful and look at the detailed specs, not just the name.

 

[BiggieShady]

But people are complaining about the 128-bit bus width!? I don't think that will be a reason not to buy it after all.

Yeah, people forget Maxwell's memory bus data compression and 7Gbps memory ... 128-bit maxwell's bus at 7Gbps should be just as fast as 192-bit kepler's bus at 6Gbps ... it should be fast enough for 1080p and pixel crunching power is more important for eye candy anyway ... if bandwidth shortcomings exist they will be insignificant (few fps)

 

[Blue-Knight]

The "benchmarks" are just a guess, but probably pretty close.

I believe it will be about 15-20% faster than the GTX 760. Meeting or slightly exceeding the power of the GTX 680.

Don't want to veer too far off topic, but just make sure it's a GDDR5 model. Or get a GTX 650

I guess in my case it would be wiser to get the GTX 750 as it is costing the same as the GTX 650 here. LOL!

 

[rruff]

Yeah, people forget Maxwell's memory bus data compression and 7Gbps memory ... 128-bit maxwell's bus at 7Gbps should be just as fast as 192-bit kepler's bus at 6Gbps

True, but what is a comparable Kepler? Even the 760 is 256bit. The 660 Ti is 192, but this needs to be faster than that. Another way to look at it is the 750 Ti has 30% lower bandwidth, but the 960 needs to be ~60% faster.

There sure are a lot of people on forums bitching about the 128bit bus and 2GB of ram! I have feeling that Nvidia knows what they are doing and the components will be very well balanced.

 

[xBruce88x]

GTX***Ti (1536SP). I wont like it if they call this the GTX960Ti. It cant be faster than a GTX770 let alone a gtx 780. If they called it the GTX970Ti then ok, but even that wouldn't make any sense because the 970 has 1664 shader units..

unless its on OEM part... and they just stick with GTX970... of course it could be an OEM GTX 960TI. i've seen them do similar things with their other generations of GPUs

 

[BiggieShady]

The 660 Ti is 192, but this needs to be faster than that.

I would say SLI GTX 660 (non ti) would be comparable in shading processing power and memory bandwidth as single GTX 960 ... anyway it will be fun to see how far off I was.

 

[Devon68]

Well yesterday I just saw they are releasing a gtx 965M for laptops so GTX***Ti (1536SP) might be GTX 965 Ti. We will see

 

[rruff]

I would say SLI GTX 660 (non ti) would be comparable in shading processing power and memory bandwidth as single GTX 960

On the chart I linked above, I'd expect the 960 to be very close to the R9 285 in performance. So 35-40% faster than a GTX 660. Quite a bit slower than SLI 660s. But the bandwidth appears to be no better than a single 660... unless Nvidia has done additional optimization.

But if I understand SLI correctly the cards basically take turns rendering frames. So the effective bandwidth doubles. The thing that doesn't is VRAM, because the place where the VRAM limitations really show up is when a single frame contains more digital information than the memory you have on each card.

If the 960 is the same as the R9 285 in performance, that would put it at 60% of a reference GTX 980, but with only 50% of the bandwidth. So it's possible that performance estimate is optimistic. The 960 may be essentially the same performance as the 760. Then it would make lots of sense for them to have 2 additional 960 models to fill the gap from there to the 970.

760 performance but with lower power use and $199? Would suck if it was true, but wouldn't surprise me. They'd sell a ton of them anyway.

I believe it will be about 15-20% faster than the GTX 760. Meeting or slightly exceeding the power of the GTX 680.

Lots of chatter about the base model debuting at $199. I just did quick scan of what the GTX 760s and 770s are selling for on pcpartpicker. Cheapest 760 was $189 and the 770 was $283... and that is after rebates! Granted, this is a crappy time to buy. I did see *one* 760 as low as $145 on BF after discounts, but most were >$170 on sale even in that period. It appears the 770s have never been less that $220.

It was interesting that Nvidia simply left the mid range market to AMD during the holiday season. R9 280s were often $150 or less. Even the 290s got down around $200 a few times. That's going to change I think now that they have a new 960, but what incentive do they have to be aggressive with performance and cost? It will be awhile before AMD comes up with anything new. Right now a $199 GTX 960 that performs no better than the 760, with <100W power consumption, would still sell like crazy. It wouldn't be quite as fast as the R9 280 and 285, but it's new and it's Nvidia. They've already proven they can sell a bunch of 750 Ti at the same price as the R9 270 even with a ~30% performance deficit.

Anyway, I'm expecting the base 960 to be very underwhelming.

 

[64K]

We'll see. If the GTX 960 performs on par with a GTX 770 for $200 then it will sell very well. If it costs $250 then probably an R9 290 would be a better deal. An R9 290 outperforms a GTX 770 by a good bit. I think we will know more soon.

 

[Blue-Knight]

If the GTX 960 performs on par with a GTX 770 for $200

It may not clearly outperform the GTX 770. But the difference would be nearly insignificant.

But I wouldn't be surprised if it outperforms it in upcoming benchmarks.

 

[rruff]

If the GTX 960 performs on par with a GTX 770 for $200 then it will sell very well. If it costs $250 then probably an R9 290 would be a better deal.

Would be nice, but I think the odds that a $200 960 will perform like the 770 are near zero. 290s were a *much* better deal than the 970s during the holidays, being only slightly slower and ~$100 cheaper on sale, but I have a feeling the 970s sold better anyway. Same for the 750 Ti vs AMD's competition. With Maxwell being low wattage and new, Nvidia has shown that they don't need to compete with AMD's old on price/performance... or even be that close.
I don't expect aggressive pricing from Nvidia until (or if) AMD comes out with something new that competes on all levels.

 

[BiggieShady]

On the chart I linked above, I'd expect the 960 to be very close to the R9 285 in performance. So 35-40% faster than a GTX 660. Quite a bit slower than SLI 660s. But the bandwidth appears to be no better than a single 660... unless Nvidia has done additional optimization.

Silly me, I meant SLI 750 Ti, same maxwell architecture and roughly double the cuda core count ... by the way, memory bandwidth is not doubled effectively in SLI because all data that goes to VRAM has to go to all cards ... if CPU has to read something from VRAM it does from a single card.

 

[rruff]

I think the base 960 will have 1024 shaders (or less), so double a 750. 2GB vram would be double also. But bandwidth is only ~40% higher. I know that on my 750s, increasing the vram clocks helped a *lot*, so it isn't like they have excessive amounts of bandwidth or anything.

As I understand it, SLI has the cards take turns processing frames. So the bandwidth *is* effectively doubled, but the vram amount isn't. That's because a lack of vram causes issues when the amount of digital information in a single frame is more than your card can handle. In other words if you are at a vram limit with a single card at 30fps, you can increase your fps to say 55 with the same quality settings, but you will not be able to increase texture detail or AA instead without causing problems.

Unless Nvidia has done some additional magic to get more out of 128bit, that's likely to be a limiting factor. I'm still betting it will just make it to 760 performance, and even that might require creative interpretation. Hope I'm wrong, though...

 

[rruff]

Might be available on the 15th: http://videocardz.com/54201/exclusive-nvidia-maxwell-gm206-pictured

Check out the prices on those listings.... $500? Must not be a US listing...

 

[neatfeatguy]

Not sure how reliable fools.com is, but the graph posted by the TC, fools.com article mentions the low card is the GTX 960. The card under the 780 is the 960Ti and the card under the 290 is the 965Ti.

Here's the link if anyone cares - click here

 

[rruff]

They don't know anything, just repeating old rumors about a made up performance graph. I wonder if any of this "info" has any truth to it or is just people making guesses. 2GB 128bit appears to be real for the base 960, but no idea if the other models are coming out, or what the pricing will be. Seems like there should be a lot of people who actually know at this point, even if it doesn't launch before the 22nd. Doesn't Nvidia send out cards so test articles appear on launch day? Maybe it will be such a let down, they don't want anyone reviewing it...

 

[rruff]

Wow! Could be BS, but I found a "leaked" Firestrike score for a highly OC'd 960. 7500 looks really good... better than I expected.

EDIT: Doh! Having never used Firestrike, I didn't realize the graphics score is under the top reading (CPU?). Anyway, a graphics score of 8597 is really nice. Is that real?

Here is Firestrike Extreme:

 

[rtwjunkie]

I think at the very least it has to perform in between the GTX 760 and 770. Why? Common sense really. Nvidia still has the 760 in it's lineup, and it needs to be replaced. History shows that a like minded number never performs only at the level of the previous one. A 960 is not going to replace the 760 position in the lineup and not out-perform it.

 

[rruff]

A 960 is not going to replace the 760 position in the lineup and not out-perform it.

It hasn't been normal practice for them, but there is no law against it. They do a lot of things that are screwier than that. Even if it's no faster than a 760 it would be far superior in power consumption, and they could release other cards to fill the hole between the 960 and 970... which is rumored to be the case.

If the Firestrike score above is for real though, it will be impressive. 14% core OC, and 17% on memory, but the score beats every stock OC'd 770. If it sells for $199, AMD is in trouble.

This might be a better comparison, a GTX 760 with Max OC scoring 6892, putting the 960 25% higher than the 760.