GTX 960 Superclocked 4GB overkill for my purposes?

[Seba]

So why GTX 960 is horrible?

Oh, I ran a 290 with a corsair 430watt for nearly a year.

So why did you replaced the power supply then after not even a year? Or did you replaced the graphics card?

 

[iiiankiii]

So why GTX 960 is horrible?


So why did you replaced the power supply then after not even a year? Or did you replaced the graphics card?

The GTX 960 is horrible because it was underwhelming on release. It only had 2GB when more and more games are pushing the 4GB limit (even at 1080p). I expected something good. Something with atleast 4gb. Having said that, the $200 price bracket, in general, sucks. That's why I recommended the 290 at $250. I wouldn't recommend anything at $200 right. I would say save up $50 because the gains are hard to ignore at the $250 price point.

Upgraded to a seasonic 750watt PSU for Crossfire 290X. Oh, the 430 watt system used a 290x, not a 290.

 

[Headfoot]

So why GTX 960 is horrible?

It's been said in this thread over and over. Refer back if you want the answer

 

[Seba]

It has been said, but without arguments to prove it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

So why GTX 960 is horrible?

I think it is a great card for a certain niche.

 

[xthetenth]

When you can get better price/performance with card A and a power supply than card B, card B is not well priced. Period.

 

[Qwertilot]

People define performance differently The 960 seems very well targeted for its chosen markets (not the people getting annoyed by it!) and seems to be getting lots of very happy user reviews.

I'm not so sure about the 4GB versions as a general proposition mind - the premium isn't trivial and the benefits not so large in general.

Unless you're very clear you want the 4GB for something now, I'd go 2GB. If that feels restrictive in 12-18 months, well there'll likely be much better mid range cards around by then when the next generation hits with the big die shrink etc.

There are (credible it seems) rumours about a 950/950ti being planned soon. They'll likely be slightly slower but cheaper than 960's. Might make sense.

 

[iiiankiii]

People define performance differently The 960 seems very well targeted for its chosen markets (not the people getting annoyed by it!) and seems to be getting lots of very happy user reviews.

I'm not so sure about the 4GB versions as a general proposition mind - the premium isn't trivial and the benefits not so large in general.

Unless you're very clear you want the 4GB for something now, I'd go 2GB. If that feels restrictive in 12-18 months, well there'll likely be much better mid range cards around by then when the next generation hits with the big die shrink etc.

There are (credible it seems) rumours about a 950/950ti being planned soon. They'll likely be slightly slower but cheaper than 960's. Might make sense.

The thing is. There are a lot of people that just don't know any better. They are happy because, for many, upgrading to a $200 GPU usually meant a giant leap over their iGPU. Of course they're going to say it's great compare to that. But what isn't?

Yes, there are instance where the low power draw of the GTX 960 is attractive. But the logical move if you care about RAW performance (let's face it, that's what most people want), is to grab a 290, right now. It's cheap. It's nearly 50% more powerful. it has double the VRAM of the GTX 960. All of that for 50 bucks more. If $50 is absolutely not doable, then, yes, the GTX 960 is fine. Although, I would personally grab a R9 280 3GB for $150 instead. Once overclocked, it'll spank an overclocked GTX 960. As a bonus, it has 3GB (which will come in to play in a lot of the newer games).

I really do think people just assume the GTX 960 is good because it's Nvidia. Marketing at its finest. But that's another topic.

 

[Qwertilot]

Nah, there's definitely more to it than marketing although I'm sure that helps

The design simply is very well focused for what 'non demanding' GPU users look for. Small, very quiet and low power but enough power to deal with basically anything realistic at 1080.

Basically fit/forget in a broadly fool proof way, which a 290/X genuinely isn't. Maybe not great value in terms of raw performance, but fairly sure NV knew precisely what they were doing with the design.

 

[shady28]

It has been said, but without arguments to prove it.

The herd mentality has taken over and the justifications for stupid statements that you're seeing will go on unabated.

Logically, you've got someone here talking about Sapphire Tri-X on a 430W PSU... Same exact thing happened in another thread in the past week, OP had a 430W PSU with a $150 budget and someone rec'd an on-sale 290.

Not that I think this will make any difference as it hasn't in the past, but -

Here's why you need a 600W+ PSU for R9 290, not the misleading 'average' usage chart posted before :

And here is why you need to pay attention to how much power you use :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-consumption-graphics-cards,2849.html

The GTX 480 in that chart is a max 250-300W power draw card, less than the R9 290.

And here is what they found :

We were almost a bit shocked to find out that the yearly electricity cost is pretty significant compared to the purchase cost of high-end graphics cards. This also applies to upper-mainstream cards. After just two years, the operational costs have exceeded the initial investment costs.

For those old enough / responsible enough to be paying their own utility bills, or perhaps those who don't want to unduly burden others (like, their family) with the costs and inconvenience associated with that kind of power use / heat production, these things matter.

For the rest, carry on..

 

[TemjinGold]

So... total system usage of 384 watts is why you need a 600+ watt PSU?

 

[derfop]

And here is why you need to pay attention to how much power you use :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-consumption-graphics-cards,2849.html

The GTX 480 in that chart is a max 250-300W power draw card, less than the R9 290.

And here is what they found :




For those old enough / responsible enough to be paying their own utility bills, or perhaps those who don't want to unduly burden others (like, their family) with the costs and inconvenience associated with that kind of power use / heat production, these things matter.

For the rest, carry on..

Heat production no argument there, and one of the reasons why I chose a 970 over the 290X. But I really think people ought to run some numbers before talking about electricity cost.

So here's a table showing electricity costs by state. With the exception of Hawaii, all 48 continental states + Alaska have electricity costs at less than $0.20 per kWh.

This is the power consumption of a 970 vs 290:

Stock for stock the difference is 81W. Now I don't know if the 290 was throttling or not, so for the sake of argument let's call the difference 100W.

Anyone who has a proper full time job and social life probably won't have time to game more than 4 hours per day on a consistent basis. So that's 400W of power difference in any given day. Now further assume that somehow said person manages to game 4 hours per day consistently for the entire year, so 365 days. The total power difference comes out to 146000W.

Assuming the person lives in Hawaii where electricity costs $0.3353 per kWh, then over the course of an entire year, he would end paying $48.95 extra for choosing to use a 290 over a 970. This is one end of the extreme, but if the person lives in Washington state where electricity is only $0.0715 per kWh, then the cost difference goes down to $10.44 per year, hardly anything to lose sleep over either way. Heck most weeks I spend more than $50 on meals alone!

Realistically I'd say anybody who isn't a full time pro gamer will have trouble gaming 4 hours per day for 365 days straight, so the cost difference due to using a 290 over 970 is likely to be even less than the 2 extremes presented above. IMO "cost of electricity due to power consumption" really isn't something that needs to be factored into the equation, unless you live in Hawaii or another country where electricity costs significantly more.

 

[shady28]

You might want to go back and look at section 3 and the graph on the bottom of section 9 in Tom's analysis.

It might seem complicated at first reading, but it is in fact really quite simple. We follow a specific person over a long period of time and track the run time of all programs and the total power consumption, including idle periods. The result is a representative, statistical average value of an average day. The details of the computer configuration used do not matter, as we are just after the average daily application usage of the users for now.

For our next step, we choose any of the relevant applications and measure the energy consumption of our test system equipped with a very low-end graphics card. The results are assigned to each respective application as a base value. Then, we measure the average consumption of each application again, but with different, more powerful, high-end graphics cards.

They basically found that the 480 used 693 KWH / year more than the base configuration using their analysis, and used 13c/kwh.

From that they concluded the 480 would cost a bit over $90 per year to operate :

Now it is true there is something major that they missed.

That 693KWH is going directly into your house as heat. AC systems are not 100% efficient, so it'll take more power to remove that heat than it took to put it there (because putting it there is near 100% efficient).

If you live anywhere south of Chicago in the US, you might as well just double that $90 because your AC will be working to cancel out your GPU (at less than 100% efficiency) for 9 months out of the year.

If you try doing that cost comparison of a 300W R9 290 and do it against the GTX 960 (110W). At 1/3 of $90, there's a $60 delta.



Year of ownership Cost 960 Cost 290
1 $30 $90
2 $60 $180
3 $90 $270


The above is assuming you don't run your AC. A lot of people around here are from Canada, which is just fine, they get to use it as a space heater. But don't be fooled, there is a cost of ownership.

 

[derfop]

Couple comments:

1. Why are you comparing a 290 to 960? The 290 is on average 45% faster than the 960 at 1080p according to TechPowerUp, so they aren't even in the same league. I commented on 970 vs 290 because that seemed to be a point of contention in this thread, but also because the performance is similar, with the 970 using a significantly less amount of power and thus heat output. Much more apples-to-apples comparison IMO.

2. Tom's base config was a 19.1W HD 5450 card, so the power and cost delta from a 250W GTX 480 isn't exactly relevant, given the 200W+ power difference. I think the following chart is more informative:

The power delta between a 970 and 290 is about 100W at most, so in Tom's charts the card closest to that criteria is the HD 5850 at a power delta of 103.7W, which somehow translates to a difference of 316.09 kWh and a cost of $41.09 per year.

But going from a power delta of 103.7W to 316.09 kWh per year (so 0.866 kWh per day) actually requires you to be gaming a full 8 hours 21 minutes every single day for the entire year. The only explanation I can think of is that the rig configuration was totally different, so other parts of the computer are contributing to power draw and not just the GPU alone. Otherwise I'm at a loss to explain Tom's numbers, unless I'm reading something totally wrong.

3. As far as AC goes, I live in the Bay Area, and I didn't even have an AC until this year, and so far have only used it twice. I won't claim to know what Chicago weather is like, but I'm a bit hard pressed to believe you'd need AC for 9 months of the year "south of Chicago" because that would basically be 75% of the US!

FWIW my 5820K + 970 SLI setup pulls about 500-550W from the wall when playing Crysis 3, so the amount of heat output should be on par if not quite a bit more than a single 290 setup. Yes my room does heat up by about 3C after a 3 hour session with an ambient temp of around 72F (22C), but it's not intolerable. This is just my subjective experience though, and YMMV of course.

Edit: Just so my post isn't completely useless, I just want to add that I agree with Seba. If OP is willing to spend $300+ on a graphics card, grab the 970, otherwise get the 960 2GB if the budget is towards the $200 end of the spectrum. 4GB on the 960 seems a bit wasted IMO. For something that's in between but much closer to the 970 in performance, the 290 also isn't a bad choice.

 

[shady28]

Well, I mostly went back to the 960 because that's what the OP posted, and recs were for an R9 290, so I was comparing them.

But yes the comparison to a 970 is not as dramatic, but still there's a cost associated with the 290 of ~$30+ / year vs 970, possibly double that if you live in a hot climate.

But to your point - even at the lower end of that ~$30/year power use cost of R9 290 vs 970, by the end of year 2 the cost difference between a 970 and an R9 290 has disappeared, and the R9 290 owner is losing money after that while having a slower card.


This though isn't really true :

But going from a power delta of 103.7W to 316.09 kWh per year (so 0.866 kWh per day) actually requires you to be gaming a full 8 hours 21 minutes every single day for the entire year.

Their models weren't just when playing a game, it was power use for all activities including idle time for that particular user profile. That 8 hours 17 minutes per day was how much time the PC was "On". The baseline profile was a non-gamer with a 5450.

But yeah, it does look like their gamer actually spent most of their time playing games.

What you may be looking for is their "average user" profile :

 

[derfop]

Yes I know the 8:17 is for the entire time the computer was on and not limited to games only. But at idle the difference in power consumption is even smaller (11W according to AnandTech) between 290 and 970, and is pretty much negligible.

I understand the part about operating costs and "breaking even" eventually. But as I've pointed out, in order to get that $30 per year difference, you really do have to pretty much game 7 hours per day every single day in the entire year for that to happen, assuming $0.13 kWh electricity cost. Now assuming AC doubles your costs, that number drops to ~3.5 hours per day. More reasonable, but averaging out to 3.5 hours per day over 365 days is still a bit of a stretch I'd argue. The other thing is if OP replaces the card after 2 years, then this becomes a moot point.

I dislike considering electricity costs because there are just too many variables. Short of the OP being very specific about where he lives, his tolerance to heat, gaming habits, and typical upgrade cycle, it's impossible to make a judgement either way.

 

[TheProgrammer]

Hi OP. Few things.

-Power difference will only be while gaming with an AMD ZeroCore part. I like the R9 380. It's latest gen GCN 1.2.

-The VPU market is a very mature market, most people are fooled by benchmarking sites using ultra settings and high AA/AF levels, some even 4K, which I don't know a soul with a 4K monitor!

-$200 or less is the sweet spot because nothing can really do 4K well enough yet or VR in a single card. I expect the AMD Fury X2 dual Fiji to be the 1st card capable of both and do it right.

-I disagree with the forum majority that the 960 is a terrible card. It was terrible on launch for the price, and the 128bit mem interface sucks. But it's not "terrible". It's NV's best offering at that sensible $200 sweet spot.

-The $200 and under range is where most people should be buying, that's the 1080 and down range. You can get away with even less if you're like most of us and play the games in the Steam top 10 list, Minecraft and League of Legends. I play at 1080P, no AA/AF, default settings in competitive games like Counterstrike Go and LoL using a R9 380.
It's very overpowered for my needs.. I'll get to why I chose it in a minute..

-Performance wise, the 960 and 380 are mostly equal.

-R9 380 > GF960?
Because a single 380 will do everything most people need to and more today and tomorrow. And once VR hits in 6 to 12 months, you may want that. You can buy another 380 and put them in Crossfire. AMD has the best VR setup in the market with LiquidVR. It achieves 100% scaling and can use 1 VPU per eye. It has fine-grained resource preemption which no Nvidia part has.
If you're even remotely thinking about VR, you want an AMD GCN part- preferably GCN 1.2 like the R9 380.. but they're all be better for Maxwell for this. Ask around to developers, it's true.

-The R9 380 is a 1440P capable card. Most VR headsets are supposed to be 1440P per eye. You won't be able to find a better priced VR-capable VPU setup than dual R9 380s.

-SLI 960s will not match the Crossfired 380s if you decide you want a VR headset in <1 year's time.

- Longer legs with the AMD GCN parts. They get faster over time and don't peter out like NV cards tend to do.
The 960 is very efficient with it's hardware specs, having a 128bit memory interface. It's good for Nvidia, highly profitable- bad for you.
The 380 has a 256bit, and GCN 1.2 has the same color delta compression that the 960 has. It's also very efficient due to that. The 380 is an unbalanced card it has way more memory bandwidth than it needs, today. This bodes well for the future though. The 960 won't improve nearly as much over time. The consoles using GCN will also help your Radeon over time.

There's many reasons like these I'd get an R9 380. It'll do more than you need today (which never hurts), but is the perfect chip for VR. Add another one in Crossfire in 6 months and you'll have a much better VR setup than dual 960's, I promise you that.

This is exactly my own plan. I was recently in the market for a video card, and got the R9 380. Tom's agrees- http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-4.html

edit to add- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4xDfEOGONw LinusTechTips reviews the R9 285 at 4K in games people actually play. Rather than just benchmark. So you'll have more than enough for VR if you end up buying 2 of these. The R9 380 is the refresh of the R9 285 used in that video.

 

[shady28]

...
edit to add- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4xDfEOGONw LinusTechTips reviews the R9 285 at 4K in games people actually play. Rather than just benchmark. So you'll have more than enough for VR if you end up buying 2 of these. The R9 380 is the refresh of the R9 285 used in that video.

That is a great video. And I agree totally. The R9 380 is one of the more interesting and relevant cards for AMD.

I'll probably be getting a new card in the next 3 months as well and 4GB versions of the 960 / 380 or Nano / 970 are pretty much the only cards I'm interested in. The 960 / 380 get no affection in forums full of extreme enthusiast types, but their target markets and usage scenarios make them by far the most relevant to the majority of users.

Again that video was really informative.

 

[TeknoBug]

I have a 960 4Gb and I'm going to say... Don't bother with the 960

 

[tential]

I have a 960 4Gb and I'm going to say... Don't bother with the 960

lol yet people will still recommend the card without owning it. Nvidia's strong brand just rolls everything. Cleaning my PC out now so I can put a 290 in.

 

[iiiankiii]

Hi OP. Few things.

-Power difference will only be while gaming with an AMD ZeroCore part. I like the R9 380. It's latest gen GCN 1.2.

-The VPU market is a very mature market, most people are fooled by benchmarking sites using ultra settings and high AA/AF levels, some even 4K, which I don't know a soul with a 4K monitor!

-$200 or less is the sweet spot because nothing can really do 4K well enough yet or VR in a single card. I expect the AMD Fury X2 dual Fiji to be the 1st card capable of both and do it right.

-I disagree with the forum majority that the 960 is a terrible card. It was terrible on launch for the price, and the 128bit mem interface sucks. But it's not "terrible". It's NV's best offering at that sensible $200 sweet spot.

-The $200 and under range is where most people should be buying, that's the 1080 and down range. You can get away with even less if you're like most of us and play the games in the Steam top 10 list, Minecraft and League of Legends. I play at 1080P, no AA/AF, default settings in competitive games like Counterstrike Go and LoL using a R9 380.
It's very overpowered for my needs.. I'll get to why I chose it in a minute..

-Performance wise, the 960 and 380 are mostly equal.

-R9 380 > GF960?
Because a single 380 will do everything most people need to and more today and tomorrow. And once VR hits in 6 to 12 months, you may want that. You can buy another 380 and put them in Crossfire. AMD has the best VR setup in the market with LiquidVR. It achieves 100% scaling and can use 1 VPU per eye. It has fine-grained resource preemption which no Nvidia part has.
If you're even remotely thinking about VR, you want an AMD GCN part- preferably GCN 1.2 like the R9 380.. but they're all be better for Maxwell for this. Ask around to developers, it's true.

-The R9 380 is a 1440P capable card. Most VR headsets are supposed to be 1440P per eye. You won't be able to find a better priced VR-capable VPU setup than dual R9 380s.

-SLI 960s will not match the Crossfired 380s if you decide you want a VR headset in <1 year's time.

- Longer legs with the AMD GCN parts. They get faster over time and don't peter out like NV cards tend to do.
The 960 is very efficient with it's hardware specs, having a 128bit memory interface. It's good for Nvidia, highly profitable- bad for you.
The 380 has a 256bit, and GCN 1.2 has the same color delta compression that the 960 has. It's also very efficient due to that. The 380 is an unbalanced card it has way more memory bandwidth than it needs, today. This bodes well for the future though. The 960 won't improve nearly as much over time. The consoles using GCN will also help your Radeon over time.

There's many reasons like these I'd get an R9 380. It'll do more than you need today (which never hurts), but is the perfect chip for VR. Add another one in Crossfire in 6 months and you'll have a much better VR setup than dual 960's, I promise you that.

This is exactly my own plan. I was recently in the market for a video card, and got the R9 380. Tom's agrees- http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-4.html

edit to add- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4xDfEOGONw LinusTechTips reviews the R9 285 at 4K in games people actually play. Rather than just benchmark. So you'll have more than enough for VR if you end up buying 2 of these. The R9 380 is the refresh of the R9 285 used in that video.

I disagree about the $200 sweet spot thing. It really depends on what you play. If all you play is MMO, counter strike, TF2, LOL, etc, then, yes, you can get by with a weaker card. In fact, the 960 is overpowered for such games. In fact, I would go lower down the tier list. I would grab a $150 card instead. The R9 280, 7850, 7870, 750ti, 660ti, 760 etc., all can be had for much less and will run those popular games without breaking a sweat.

If you play AAA games, the GTX 960 or the 380 are both too weak to drive AAA games at 1440. Yes, 4k gaming is a bit tough. You need 2 high end cards. It really depends on what you want to play and at what resolution.

I've game on a 280x (which is faster than the 380) and it struggles to maintain 60fps in many games (AAA Titles) at 1080 with high settings. Right now, the best bang for the buck is hands down the 290. At $250, it's really hard to beat.

Don't even try to talk about VR with a 380. You need to maintain a good 90fps PER EYE to reduce motion sickness. I don't see the 380 doing 180FPS unless it is minecraft or LOL, or something not that demanding.

 

[shady28]

lol yet people will still recommend the card without owning it. Nvidia's strong brand just rolls everything. Cleaning my PC out now so I can put a 290 in.

Everything has to be in context, and from what I can tell TeknoBug 'upgraded' from a 760 to a 960. And yeah, that would be a bad / useless move given that a box that powers a 760 can power a 280x or 380.

The 960 is really targeted at people with ~400W PSUs / OEM boxes that won't power 200W+ cards and either don't want to or can't easily upgrade the PSU. In that respect, they have no competition.

As far as getting opinions of actual owners, all you gotta do is click the link below, find your card, and start reading reviews. No need to trust forums full of fanboys.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709 600537575

 

[Qwertilot]

More than just PSU's. Its attitude.

Enthusiast GPUs need to have computers built round them, something in the 960's class has to fit round peoples computers It does do that nicely.

 

[TheProgrammer]

My R9 380 can play AAA games at 1440P. Use the settings the game deems appropriate for the card and enjoy. Don't be fooled by benchmarks at ultra settings and with AA/AF, the visual difference between normal or default settings and ultra really is not that big. If the FPS do dip below your refresh rate, the card is Freesync capable.
I've owned the top card since 1996 from almost every generation. Today- this is a mature market. The time to stop buying top end hardware is now, even a $200 card like the R9 380 is more than enough for the vast majority if you look at what people are playing on Steam stats.

You don't know what you're talking about if you think R9 380s in Crossfire won't power the coming VR headsets.
Oculus Rift's recommended hardware is a single R9 290. Dual 380s will beat that. But the 380 has GCN 1.2 which will give it an advantage over a 290 GCN 1.1 part.

Yes you can step down to a R7 360 if you only play competitive games like I do most of the time. Steam top 10 list, Minecraft, League of Legends, top 15 or so on Twitch.

But since the OP was spending $200, the R9 380 is easily the best card at that price point. It's 4K gaming capable in games that people actually play, rather than benchmark. And it's the cheapest VR ready card on the market.

 

[Headfoot]

290 = $260 and it's 50% faster than a 960 4GB for $230. It's 50% more performance for $30.

If you can't see why the 290 is a better buy in 95% of cases than the 960, you're denser than brick or a fanboy.