EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSuperClocked Review

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By Kevin Carbotte
published

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Temperature, Noise And Power Benchmarks

Load Temperature

Since there is no reference cooler for the GTX 960, each manufacturer has its own design, forcing us to compare competing brands. For this test, we have an Asus GTX 960 Strix and a Zotac GTX 960 AMP!.

Asus' Strix excels, but EVGA's cooler manages to maintain a temperature under 70 degrees, enabling the lowest idle temperatures as well.

Acoustics

For the acoustics test, we stop all system fans and take a reading from two inches from the card's I/O bracket. This allows us to focus on the GPU cooler's output specifically.

The chart starts at 30 dB, which is what most humans would consider silence. All three cards are completely silent at idle since their fans don’t spin. But the real surprise is our findings during a gaming load. Zotac's card tops out just above 36.5dB. EVGA's SSC never even reaches 36dB, which is the lowest our gear will register. Suffice it to say that this card won't cause any distracting noise in your gaming setup.

Power

EVGA claims a whopping 33% power increase over the reference 120W specification; let's see if that's accurate:

EVGA pulls an impressive 155W under FurMark's "power virus" test, a full 35W above the reference specification. While those measurements won't attract efficiency aficionados, overclockers may rejoice. This is probably one of the highest-powered GeForce GTX 960 cards available, so throttling should be less of an issue than you may experience on other overclocked cards.

Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

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76 Comments Comment from the forums
  • damric
    Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

    http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264
    Reply
  • Derek Furst
    Worth every penny except that it is slower and more expensive than the R9 280.

    http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3790264
    intel hd4000 is better than a gtx 980. See, i can say things that aren't true as well. Not only is the 960 the SAME price on newegg, it comes with the witcher 3 (a 60 dollar game i was going to buy already) and on passmark, the r9 280 only scored like a 4100 something while the 960 scores 5980.
    Reply
  • Grognak
    2GB for a 1080p card... That's not acceptable anymore.
    Reply
  • damric
    You don't have to use newegg.

    PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
    Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($164.99 @ Micro Center)
    Total: $164.99
    Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when availableGenerated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-19 03:43 EDT-0400
    Who uses Passmark to test graphics cards?

    Now try running Fires Strike Ultra and watch the GTX 960 fall to its knees.
    Reply
  • damric
    I question the mental capacity of anyone who would spend $210 on a card with such a narrow memory bus.
    Reply
  • Koushik Majumder
    2Gb is not acceptable anymore at 1080p
    Reply
  • caj
    the 280 will finish this hands down. also the 128 bit highly cripples the possbility of sli. it would have been considered mayb it it had a bandwith of 256bit.


    www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11230-00-20G/dp/B00IZXOW80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426752176&sr=8-1&keywords=280

    I've removed the other two copies of this post - SS
    Reply
  • MasterDell
    Really sad to see Nvidia put 2GB on and such a small bus :"(

    If 3GB I would have been pretty impressed but that is not the case..

    660 is 2GB, 760 is 2GB, 960 is 2GB and so was the 860M if that counts.. So Nvidia, maybe time for a change so that AMD doesn't slap you in the mid-ranged GPU area like this did in the 7** series. Most of the consumers will want to buy those $180-$250 cards and when they come to us and ask us what to get we would have obviously said the 270-280x (depending on their budget) Nothing that Nvidia had to offer could come close because their prices were so high. I have never suggested that anyone should buy a 760. But now the 960 is an option but due to that extra VRAM the 280 has, I will still suggest it.
    Reply
  • Nuckles_56
    Your test system is interesting with the 3 gtx 980's used for testing :p

    Asus Matrix Platinum GeForce GTX 980
    1241MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1753MHz (7009MT/s)

    Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Omega Edition
    1203MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1762MHz (7048MT/s)

    Reference GeForce GTX 980
    1126MHz GPU, 2GB GDDR5 at 1750MHz (7000MT/s)
    Reply
  • sonny1973n10
    "Worth every penny"

    Yeah right! Who would spend $210 for a 128-bit?
    The 384-bit R9 280 is cheaper, performs better and has more room for OCing.
    Reply