you can't make a price/performance ratio based on sales
I am talking about there were plenty of situations where $30-50 spent above 960 - the price of a single AAA game - netted huge performance benefits and more VRAM. Considering most budget gamers use their cards for 2-3 years, there was no great reason to buy a 960 2GB for most of them. It was slow and overpriced.
that will no longer be the case in a few days, prices varied and yes the 290 was a fantastic buy earlier this year,
I remember prices of R9 280X, 290 since January 2015. At no point in time was 960 2GB a good value against either of those cards.
but it doesn't invalidate the 960 which was a more accessible card for many reasons, significantly lower average price,
Doesn't matter since it'll now cost more $ for the 960 2GB user to go out and buy a new 2016 card. It's not my fault that consumer cannot do math or calculate price/performance or total cost of ownership. Besides, 280X/7970Ghz was much cheaper than 290.
and even the fact that it's a true midrange/low end GPU, with lower power draw and physical space used,
Physical space? What's the next argument you are going to use to justify 960's weak GPU performance. Power usage never failed to sell GTX460, 560, 560Ti, 660, 660Ti and almost of those had dual-6 pin connectors. GTX460 OC was touted as the card to go to and that thing used > 200W of power once overclocked. Suddenly power usage matters?
also it's from Nvidia, which meant much better support at launch for a ton of big AAA titles this year,
Source? In almost all modern and popular AAA games, 960 2-4GB loses to an R9 280X, and to an R9 290. In fact, 960 even loses to a 380, not even a 380X. Your "better support" argument in this case is made up of thin air. This might apply for 970/980/980Ti/Titan X SLI but it absolutely doesn't apply to the 960. 960 got rekt by a 280X on day 1 and it continued.
better DX11 efficiency and so on,
That's great and now after wasting $180-200, this gamer will have to go out and buy yet another $200 card just to get to where R9 290/970/390 was all this time. Brilliant way to hype up efficiency while ignoring $ wasted over time, worse performance and IQ during the entire course of ownership of the 960.
even against the 380X I would probably pick a 960 4GB and OC it.
Have fun with that. It'll take a max overclocked 960 4GB just to come close to a stock 380X. Did you not read reviews?
you can watch the video I posted for a balanced comparison with its competitors at the time, the 960 didn't bring as aggressive price/perf as the 970 did, but it was at the right price range with the right performance for the time,
Absolutely not. Even ignoring all AMD cards,
960 was the worst x60 card NV released in the last 5 generations. It's been proven already by Computerbase. Once this generation is wrapped up and the dust settles, 950/960 will go down in history as two of the worst mid-range cards NV released of this generation. Both are underpowered, one of those was VRAM gimped for a long time and neither is ready for DX12 games.
There were at least 3 cards that offered superior price/performance and 2/3 superior performance against the 960 for its entire life up to now: R9 280, R9 280X and R9 290. At no point in time did the 960 2GB offer superior price/performance to these 3 cards.
2GB was also the amount of memory most of the cards competing in price with the 960 had unfortunately.
False. R9 280/280X/290. That's at least 3 cards that were priced in the vicinity of the 960 in the US/Canada that had 3-4GB of VRAM.
why that graphic? do you really think it's a good idea to use a game where the 980 is behind a 290X as an example? since you don't care about having a fair comparison, why not use Project Cars?
I can link so many games where R9 280X crushes a 960 2GB or 4GB, but what's the point? You already made up your mind that 960 is a good card. The point wasn't to link a benchmark where 980 isn't performing as well but to show that 960 bombs in many modern titles. This doesn't happen with R9 280X or 290. You think SW:BF is one example? Where you have been in the last 11 months?
Here 15 games consolidated:
R9 380 17% faster
R9 380X 28% faster
R9 280X 29% faster
No matter how you slice it, if the gamer cares about performance and price/performance, for 2015 given the huge amount of extra performance offered by competing cards like 280X, and a garantuan amount of performance offered in the 290/290X/390/970, the 960 is a failure (much like the 285 or 380 2GB are as well until they dropped to $130-140). Ya ya, I know that 960 sold like hot cakes but that says more about the average PC gamer's knowledge of the graphics card market and their inability to do research and their brand attachment than about how good the 960 is. I wouldn't be surprised at all that 960 sold the most to the newcomer PC gamers who are either completely new to PC gaming or switched from consoles to PCs. In the pantheon of dGPU history, NV's x60 cards were always far better. GTX460 OC could easily trade blows with a 5850, which is to say that 960 should be trading blows with a 390 level card. The reality is the 960 is really a 950, it's not a true 9
60 card. It's only x60 in its marketing name, not performance or historical standing of x60 NV cards. About the only x60 level card that was just as bad if not worse was the 8600GT/S. Those were horrible too.
Today R9 280X still sells for
$170 and pawn every single 960 on the market.
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Anyway, the point of this thread is the 960Ti vs. 380X. 960Ti is what the 960 should have been on day 1. At the very least NV should have released 960 4GB for $199 instead of gimping it with 2GB.
As I said in other thread, 380X or 960Ti are both pointless when GTX970/390 are hovering around $230-250 mark and without special sales they are $270-280. At $249 US, 960Ti will be overpriced in the US market, but again
YMMV in your specific region/country. For example, in the US R9 380X is priced way too close to GTX970/290/390 but in Canada R9 380X is priced very close to the GTX960 4GB.
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