There’s no gainsaying that you don’t need an extreme graphics card for playing most games on your PC. A mid-tier graphics card is sufficient to play most games as long as you don’t crank the settings to high or ultra, and turn some of the features like anti-aliasing and v-sync off. With that in mind, Nvidia has launched the GTX 960 Ultra graphics card.
Based on the second-gen Maxwell architecture, the GTX 960 is targeted mostly at Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) gamers, like the popular League of Legends and DOTA 2. And, with a price tag of just under $200, it is also bang into the teeth of AMD’s strongest current price/performance ratio.
The GTX 960 is based on Nvidia’s new GM206 GPU. The GM206 GPU is a midrange part that’s essentially exactly half a GM204. It retains the same architectural layout and resource allocation as that GPU, with 128 CUDA cores per Streaming Multiprocessor (SM). The chip may be smaller, with just 1024 cores instead of GTX 980’s 2048, but the chip’s internal caches and resources are distributed in the same ratios. One aspect of the card that’s likely to raise eyebrows is its reliance on a 128-bit main memory bus. While the GTX 960 uses fairly fast GDDR5, clocked at 1750MHz (7Gbps effective datarate), the main memory bus is tiny by modern standards.
Beyond trying to appeal to MOBA gamers, Nvidia’s new card also represents a great choice for those looking to build small or quiet PCs with plenty of graphics-processing power inside. The 960 has a 120W TDP, requires only a single 6-pin power connector, and can even run silently at a measly 30W when playing League of Legends at max settings and 1080p resolution. The other side of that coin is that the 960 has plenty of overclocking room if you’re not content with gaming at the most popular 1080p resolution, with Nvidia saying this card was “built for overclocking.”
The Nvidia GTX 960 is on sale now in the US and European markets at a retail price of $199.