With a single GTX 960 threatening to shake up the mid-range the way its bigger siblings did, the question on everyone's mind is whether two GTX 960 cards can measure up to single, bigger GTX 900 series cards, and on the cheap.
EVGA's GTX 960 SSC is built upon the company's famous ACX Cooler for extremely low noise levels, and it turns itself off completely while idling. The card is also overclocked out of the box with a sizable overclock that helps it gain 5% performance over the NVIDIA reference design.
MSI's new GeForce GTX 960 Gaming comes overclocked out of the box. Just like previous MSI Gaming cards, the board runs extremely quiet, emitting almost no noise while gaming, and it also turns off its fans in idle. With a price of $200, MSI has chosen to go with NVIDIA's reference-design pricing.
The ASUS GTX 960 STRIX OC is a custom variant of the GTX 960 that comes with an overclock out of the box on both GPU and memory. It is also the only card that features a backplate. Like all other boards, it will completely turn off its fans in idle and light gaming for the perfect noise-free experience.
With 3x DP, 2x DVI and 1x HDMI, Gigabyte's GTX 980 G1 Gaming features the most complete output configuration. The card is also overclocked out of the box, and a powerful triple-fan thermal solution keeps it cool. In our testing, we also found Gigabyte to have massively increased the power limit, which overclockers and voltmodders will find beneficial.
MSI's GTX 970 Gaming is probably the best GTX 970 on the market. It comes overclocked out of the box, with an amazing noise-less cooler for light gaming, one that is also extremely quiet with even the most demanding titles. Temperatures are great, too, so you should definitely consider this card if you are in the market for a GTX 970.
Every two or so years, AMD rolls out a year-end Catalyst driver update, which not only steps up performance and splats bugs, but also expands their own software feature-set. The new Catalyst 14.12 Omega is part of AMD's effort to catch up with and get ahead of NVIDIA's latest software features.
With a base clock of 1203 MHz, Colorful's iGame GTX 970 is one of the highest-clocked GTX 970 cards available on the market. Its triple-fan, dual-slot cooler achieves excellent temperatures and contributes to its overclocking potential, which is higher than with any other GTX 970 we have tested thus far.
PCI-Express x16 3.0 is well established in the market, and the majority of gamers are using the interface. But what happens if you end up in a slot-bandwidth-constrained situation? We are testing NVIDIA's latest GeForce GTX 980 flagship in 17 games, at four resolutions, including 4K, to assess what performance to expect.
The ASUS GTX 980 STRIX OC is the company's latest flagship, featuring a completely passive operation in idle and light load and an extremely quiet cooler during full-on gaming. The GTX 980 STRIX also impresses with its power consumption - lower than the NVIDIA reference design, it still has the card deliver more performance.
MSI's latest flagship is the GTX 980 Gaming. It delivers a super quiet gaming experience thanks to a powerful thermal solution and a well-crafted fan profile. In idle and light gaming, the fans will even stop completely. MSI has also overclocked their card out of the box, which yields around 10% extra performance.
NVIDIA's $550 GeForce GTX 980 shook up the high-end graphics card market, and today, we are testing two of these cards in SLI. This killer combination will let you build an Ultra HD capable gaming system, or enjoy smooth fragging with G-SYNC Surround.
Palit's GTX 970 JetStream is one of the highest-clocked, custom design GTX 970s out there. It features a triple-slot, dual-fan cooler that will completely stop the fans in idle and light gaming. Palit's card is also the most affordable custom design, with just a $15 price premium.
Today, NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 980, which brings the Maxwell architecture to the high-end. It features massive power efficiency improvements and reduced noise, but also beats the GTX 780 Ti in raw performance. Pricing is quite acceptable, too, with an MSRP of $549.
ASUS just released their GeForce Strix GTX 970 OC, an overclocked version of the GTX 970 with its own custom-PCB. What is special about the STRIX technology is that it will shut off the fans completely during idle, media playback, and light gaming, resulting in a completely noiseless experience.
At half the price of a GeForce GTX 780 Ti, the GeForce GTX 970 can tempt you into buy a pair of them. With Ultra HD monitors dropping below the $500 mark, a playable Ultra HD gaming PC under $2000 suddenly sounds realistic. Here's why spending 3 grand on a GTX TITAN-Z was a bad idea.
EVGA's brand-new GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX uses the company's latest ACX cooler, which promises to improve its noise and temperatures over the reference design. It is also overclocked out of the box for that little bit of extra performance it needs to beat the Radeon R9 290X.
Today, AMD launches the Radeon R9 285 based on their brand-new Tonga GPU, which replaces Tahiti, promising to be faster and more power efficient. Sapphire's board comes with a custom cooler and is overclocked out of the box for some extra performance.
Palit's GeForce GTX 750 Ti KalmX is the first completely fanless NVIDIA graphics card in a long time to offers performance that doesn't suck. Thanks to its fanless design, there is no noise from the card itself, which is important for media PC systems or quiet office PCs.
Sapphire's R9 290 Vapor-X comes highly overclocked out of the box, matching the R9 290X in performance. The card's triple-fan, triple-slot cooler manages temperatures very well and offers a unique feature: you decide whether the card idles with one or three fans running, which lets you focus on temperature or noise.
The new ASUS GTX 780 STRIX introduces a completely passive operation while the card is idling, which provides a noise-free experience. The GTX 780 STRIX 6 GB also features twice the memory capacity of the regular GTX 780 and a large overclock out of the box.
MSI's new GTX 780 Gaming 6 GB doubles the available video RAM over the reference design, which just has 3 GB. With the latest titles requiring 3 GB VRAM minimum for textures at Ultra, this 6 GB card could help provide a performance advantage. We will investigate this claim by using our brand-new VGA test suite.
MSI's Radeon R9 280X Gaming 6 GB comes with twice the video memory of the reference design. We will test multiple resolutions, including EyeFinity and 4K, to see whether it really makes a difference. Another highlight of the card is that it's really quiet, quieter than any other R9 280X we've tested before.
The $700 MSI R9 290X Lightning is MSI's latest flagship card geared toward overclockers and enthusiasts. It comes with a large overclock out of the box, higher than any other custom R9 290X available today. The board is cooled by a large triple-slot, triple-fan cooler that yields excellent temperatures.
Today, AMD is launching their Radeon R9 295X2, a dual-GPU card based on two fully unlocked, fully clocked Hawaii graphics processors. As a result, the card delivers impressive numbers in 4K and EyeFinity. But with a price of $1500, it is certainly not cheap, no matter how you look at it.
