Nvidia has taken the wraps of its latest mid-range graphics card, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, claiming it’ll be the best bet for those gaming at 1080p resolutions.
The new card follows the launch of the flagship 900-series cards, the GTX 980 and GTX 970 that launched in late 2014, and it’s based on the same Maxwell architecture. As such it brings with it not just performance improvements but power saving too.
Compared to the last card that Nvidia released at this price, the GTX 760, the GTX 960 will have around a 10% performance increase and yet consumer 20W less power. Nvidia even reckons the card will be able to play the popular Massively Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game League of Legends at a resolution of 1080p and framerate of 60fps with the game at max settings and only draw 30W.
It’s this slightly more casual gamer segment that Nvidia is keen to target with this new card, citing the popularity of other titles like DOTA 2 and the fact that the regular Steam user hardware survey shows that it’s this $200 price range of card that is most popular.
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Inside the card, the GPU packs in 1,024 Maxwell cores and will run at 1127MHz, with a boost frequency of 1178MHz, though Nvidia expects the card to be very overclockable.
A 128-bit wide memory bus will talk to 2GB of RAM and provide 7Gbps of bandwidth, while a single 6-pin power connector will be required to provide enough juice, at least for the reference design. Nvidia expects some partners to use extra power connectors to enhance overclocking.
Display outputs will consist of 2 DL-DVI, an HDMI 2.0 and a DisplayPort 1.2, with the latter supporting Nvidia’s G-Sync monitor technology, including the just announced Asus ROG PG27AQ and Acer XB270HU.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
