How We Tested
Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 960 is much-anticipated. We recently published our in-depth launch review, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960: Maxwell In The Middle. That story should tell you all there is to know about the new product and its features, along with some game benchmarks. Essentially, it brings Maxwell into the $200 market.
This evaluation focuses specifically on what makes EVGA’s GeForce GTX 960 SSC different from the competition. We’ll be testing the cooler's thermal and acoustic capabilities, as well as power consumption. Lastly, we’ll overclock the card to see where its limits are. Since there are no reference GTX 960s available for testing, we’ve used a Zotac GTX 960 clocked as close to reference as possible.
Test System | |||||
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CPU | Intel Core i7-5930K (Haswell-E), 3.5/3.7GHz, Six Cores, LGA 2011-v3, 15MB Shared L3 Cache, Hyper-Threading enabled, Overclocked to 4.2GHz | ||||
Motherboard | MSI X99S Xpower AC (LGA 2011-v3) Chipset: Intel X99 Express, BIOS v1.5 | ||||
Networking | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller | ||||
Memory | Crucial Ballistix DDR4-2400, 4 x 4GB, 1200MHz, CL 16-16-16-39 2T | ||||
Graphics | Asus Matrix Platinum GeForce GTX 9801241MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1753MHz (7009MT/s)Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Omega Edition1203MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1762MHz (7048MT/s)Reference GeForce GTX 9801126MHz GPU, 2GB GDDR5 at 1750MHz (7000MT/s) | ||||
SSD | Samsung 840 Pro, 256GB SSD, SATA 6Gb/s | ||||
Power | Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10, 850W, ATX12V, EPS12V | ||||
Software and Drivers | |||||
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64 | ||||
DirectX | DirectX 11 |