This week, with the release of NVIDIA's newest GTX 960 GPU, we have dedicated three of these deals to what we consider to be the three best GM206-powered cards available right now.
Triple Play Deals of the Week
This week NVIDIA released their newest Maxwell GPU, the GTX 960. We recently benchmarked the ASUS Strix GTX 960 and found that it was a firm progression from the GTX 760. Even though the price on each GPU is nothing special, we decided to include three of the best GTX 960s available for the price.
ASUS Strix GTX 960 ($210): Being the GPU we were able to get a hands-on experience with, the first of the GTX 960s we have included is the ASUS Strix. It comes with the standard 1024 CUDA cores with 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit interface. The Core Clock speeds are 1253MHZ in OC Mode and 1228MHz in Gaming Mode with Boost Clocks of 1317MHz OC Mode and 1291MHz Gaming Mode. More details can be found on our benchmarking article. The Strix is one of the few initial launch cards capable of spinning its fans down to 0 RPM, eliminating fan noise entirely.
Gigabyte GTX 960 ($200): Next up, we included a smaller version of the GTX 960 for SFF builds. This model uses a single fan and two copper heatpipes for dissipation. The Core Clock speeds are slightly over clocked to 1165MHz (1228MHz Boost) against the 1126MHz reference speed. With a relatively small length of 181mm, the Gigabyte model is perfect for most smaller PC builds. It comes with HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI display connections with a max resolution of 4096 x 2160. Note that you won’t really be gaming at this resolution given the limitations of the card, though it’d run a media box at 4K if dedicated primarily to browsing and media consumption. You should have no problem playing most games out at high settings on 1080p, some more demanding games like ARMA III and Far Cry 4 at medium to high settings.
EVGA GTX 960 ($200): Lastly, we have EVGA's entry into the GTX 960 arena. EVGA manufactures some of the most popular GeForce devices on the market, when looking at pure numbers. The Core clock speed is 1127MHz (1178 Boost). It comes with HDMI, 3 x DisplayPort, and a DVI connection. The EVGA ACX 2.0 cooler will keep temps down during those intensive gaming sessions. You should be able to play most games out at high settings, some games like Metro and ACU at medium to high settings.
There are many more deals out there to find, so until next time.
- Michael "Mikagmann2" Mann.