Tweaking the Tech: MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G Review

Everyone knows by now that NVIDIA’s new Maxwell architecture is really good with the performance it offers per watt. Maxwell cards have been launched at the mid-range segment with the GTX 750 and 750 Ti. The top end is also covered by the GTX 980 and the GTX 970. This leaves a yawning gap in the upper mid-range that AMD’s R9 285 is currently occupying comfortably. That is about to change on January 22, 2015 with the launch of NVIDIA’s newest offering, the GTX 960.

[section label=”Specification” anchor=”Specification”]Specification

The card has exactly half the CUDA cores and ROPs as the flagship GTX 980 at 1024 and 32 respectively, which is a lower core count than its predecessor the GTX 760. The Core clock matches the 980 at 1126MHz but the boost clock is lower at 1178MHz for the stock card. The MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G bumps these up to 1216MHz and 1279MHz. The VRAM is also half at 2GB as against 4GB for the GTX 980 and clocked just 10MHz higher at 7010MHz for the stock card. The MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G comes with 2GB of Samsung GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 7012MHz. Seems MSI decided to play it safe with the overclock values on their cards since the GTX 960 is available from other manufacturers with higher clocks out of the box.

The back of the card has only one DVI-I slot, one HDMI slot and three DisplayPort slots. It also has a single SLI connector.

The launch price (MSRP) for the GTX 960 varies from ₹16,490 to ₹22,900. The MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G has a MSRP of ₹22,900.

[section label=”Build Quality and Packaging” anchor=”Build Quality and Packaging”]Build Quality and Packaging

The MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G features MSI’s Twin Frozr V cooling design. It has an aggressive look with its Red and Black colour scheme with a matte finish. The card is quite big with measured dimensions of 27cmX17cmX4cm, making it a chore to fit in smaller cases. The MSI proprietary TORX twin 10cm fans come with Zero Frozr technology which means they only begin operating once the GPU temperatures cross a thermal threshold of 60°C and shut down once the temperature drops below 50°C. This means the card will be silent in idle usage scenarios and the fans will have a longer life. While we have tested this card in the winter when ambient temperatures are low, we wonder how well this will work out with the higher temperatures of summer. The threshold of 60° does seem reasonable enough to be able to keep the card within limits and offer enough of a buffer to arrest the rising temperatures from spiralling out of control, though a temperature of 55° would be closer to the sweet spot. One might just want to scale back on the overclock in the summers to be on the safer side.

The PCB is also finished in matte black and features an anti-bending plate. The Card’s height is slightly lesser than the 2 slots it occupies and is designed to reduce some of the issues with cooling in multi card SLI setups. There is no heat sheath covering the PCB though like in the stock NVIDIA design. The heatsink has a large copper base and multiple heatpipes using MSI’s SuperSU pipe layout. There is a MSI Dragon LED on the side that can be turned off by just unplugging it. Due to the extra length of the card, there is a lot of blank space on the PCB. The cover above the heatsink feels a little flimsy when trying to insert or remove the card from the motherboard inside the case. MSI doesn’t tout the quality of the components it uses on the PCB, but closer inspection reveals that they are indeed of high quality.

The GPU package comes with a quick start guide, a software DVD, an advertising booklet, one 6pin to 8pin PCI-E Power converter cable and a DVI to VGA adapter. All the Back slots get protective caps as do the pins on the PCB for the PCI-E slot and the SLI connector. The Disc does not contain the drivers though, instead asking the user to install the GeForce Experience application to download and install them. It seems even Hardware now requires a one-time internet connection to be able to work. Sadly, MSI does not include a sticker to show off your purchase.

[section label=”Testing Methodology” anchor=”Testing Methodology”]Testing Methodology

We tested the MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G not only for the average Frames per Second (FPS) but also for the 99^th Percentile Frame time which tells us about the performance of the GPU within the second. Within the Second testing is useful to understand micro-stutter which can render a game unplayable despite FPS being high. Fraps 3.5.99 allowed us to calculate both.

The card is an upper Mid-range card that can push some games to their limits at the test resolution, so we decided to use highest possible settings in our benchmark games and compare with other Top End GPUs. We tried to disable CPU dependent settings or minimise their impact where possible. We also scaled back VSync and frame buffering were disabled for testing. All tests were run at 1920×1080 on a single monitor configuration.

Test System:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 @ 3.8GHz
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme 3
RAM: 2x4GB G.Skill Sniper CL9 1600MHz, 2x2GB G.Skill Ripjaws CL9 1600MHz
PSU: Corsair TX650 650W
HDD: 2xSeagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB, 1xWesten Digital Red 3TB
OS: Windows 8.1 x64
NVIDIA Driver: 334.89 for older benchmarks
NVIDIA Driver: 344.07 (Beta Driver) for GTX 980
NVIDIA Driver: 347.25 for MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G
AMD Driver: 14.3 Beta 1 (Beta Driver)

While this system may not look like a purpose built test rig, we decided to use a normal usage PC so as to better reflect real world scores of the card. The games were also tested with a few applications like Antivirus, Browser, VOIP tool and others running in the background to get a realistic usage scenario. All HDDs were thoroughly defragmented prior to usage. Due to lack of equipment we were unable to conduct acoustic and power testing.

[section label=”Tests: 3DMark” anchor=”Tests”]3DMark 11 Firestrike

3Dmark is an artificial Benchmarking tool whose Firestrike Test is very thorough on DirectX 11cards powering High-end PCs. The full test run for Firestrike includes 2 GPU only tests, a CPU dependent Physics Test and a Combined Graphics and Physics Test. The Tool is also useful for stress testing a GPU when run on loop.

Given that we are looking for the Performance of the Card itself, one should look at the Graphics score and the FPS for Graphics tests 1 and 2. The Physics and Combined tests are CPU dependent, which is the limiting factor of our test rig.

[section label=”Benchmarks 2014″ anchor=”Benchmarks14″]2014 Benchmark Games

We used a set of games as Benchmarks in our GPU reviews for 2014. Looking at the performance of some games in this set, we decided that they were too easy on the latest GPUs and needed to be switched for other, more demanding games.

We have presented a summary of benchmarks from the old set and have posted detailed benchmarks from our new set. The Games in the old set were Batman Arkham Origins, Battlefield 4, Bioshock Infinite, Company of Heroes 2, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, GRID 2, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider (2013) and Total War Rome II, with Thief (2014) for some overclocking benchmarks. Our new set retains Battlefield 4, Company of Heroes 2, Tomb Raider (2013) and Total War: Rome II. New additions are Far Cry 4 (replaces Far Cry 3), Grid Autosport (replaces GRID 2), Metro Last Light Redux (replaces Bioshock Infinite), Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (replaces Batman Arkham Origins), Ryse: Son of Rome (replaces Crysis 3) and Thief (2014)(replaces Sleeping Dogs). Since we didn’t have other cards to compare with in the new set, you will only see the standalone performance of two GTX 960 variants.

Batman Arkham Origins is a game that’s been supported by NVIDIA and utilises their PhysX technology to handle physics. We used highest possible settings. PhysX was also set to Enhanced. We ran the inbuilt benchmark tool with a FRAPS timed run of 120 seconds. Since this benchmark was picked mainly to showcase the NVIDIA exclusive PhysX performance, one should ignore the AMD card results which are generated sans PhysX.

The Striker 760 is an overclocked GPU and it manages to outperform both the GTX 960 variants. The Asus Strix GTX 960 does manage a higher minimum framerate though. Note that the GTX 960 performs at roughly two thirds of the GTX 980.

The Unreal Engine 3 powered Bioshock Infinite really pushed the boundaries of visual effects achievable with the ageing engine. It comes with a built in benchmark mode which runs for a lower time period than the standard 120s we used in other tests.

The GTX 960s are neck and neck in this and barely edge past the Striker. Again the performance is two thirds of the GTX 980 with the AMD card slotting in in between, but losing on the 99^th percentile frametime and minimum FPS.

CryEngine 3 was built to push the PC Hardware to its limits with Crysis 3 and deliver Maximum Eye Candy. We used the highest possible settings for the purpose of our test. The test run consisted of a section of the first mission for 120s as the game surprisingly offers no benchmark tool.

We consider Crysis 3 to be the true graphical benchmark for GPUs given how little it varies in performance across CPUs. The Asus Strix GTX 960 manages to edge out the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G by a whisker, but that is enough to bring the average FPS above the 30 mark. The Striker is well and truly beat. The GTX 960s perform at 60% of the GTX 980.

Far Cry 3 is a visually impressive game that lacks a benchmark mode. We used highest possible settings and the test run consisted of a 120s sample from the game’s single player campaign where we spent some time goofing off in the open world.

The GTX 960s are again in a close race with the Asus Strix GTX 960 winning on two counts but dipping lower in minimum FPS. The Striker loses out to both but manages to beat the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G in the 99^th percentile frametime and the minimum FPPS for both GTX 960s. The GTX 960s again perform at roughly 60% of the GTX 980 with the AMD card slotting in in between.

GRID 2 from Codemasters is one of the few games in our test suite that has no allegiance to either NVIDIA or AMD, which makes it a neutral candidate to better judge the GPU’s performance. We used highest possible Settings to run the benchmark tool offered by the game.

The GTX 960s spring a real surprise in this game with 90% of the performance of the GTX 980 and beating the Striker and the AMD card soundly. Even the minimum FPS is just 1 short of the GTX 980. The Asus Strix GTX 960 edges ahead once again.

While the game is ageing, Sleeping Dogs is still a stunner when it comes to running benchmarks. We pushed the settings to highest possible and ran the game’s built in benchmark run.

The GTX 960s perform quite poorly as related to other benchmarks. They barely manage to beat the Striker and are roughly 55% of the GTX 980. The Asus Strix GTX 960 manages to stay ahead of the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G on the average FPS but loses in the 99^th percentile frametime. The AMD card performs much better.

[section label=”Benchmarks 2015″ anchor=”Benchmarks15″]2015 Benchmark Set

Since we didn’t have other cards to compare with in the new set, you will only see the standalone performance of two GTX 960 variants for some of the new games.

Company of Heroes 2

Relic’s Company of Heroes 2 is a tough nut to crack for quite a few GPUs, though it’s dependent on CPUs to a great degree as well. We used highest possible Settings with Physics turned off and Low AA for the short 45s benchmark run the game offers.

The MSI card manages to edge out both the Asus Strix GTX 960 and the AMD card, with both GTX 960s easily outperforming the Striker. In this game, the GTX 960 performs at roughly three quarters the GTX 980’s output.

The game is CPU heavy and the large fluctuations in the frametime graph show it, since the CPU is a bottleneck. The FPS stays above the playable 30 for half the run.

Far Cry 4

Far Cry 4 adds even more visual effects to the DUNIA engine of Far Cry 3 and it has some NVIDIA specific effects like God Rays and realistic Fur as well. This makes for an absolute visual treat when all settings are cranked up to the max like in our 2 minute benchmark run.

The Asus Strix GTX 960 seems to perform rather poorly with all of Far Cry 4’s bells and whistles on. Perhaps the additional power available to the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G helps it perform better, though neither card manages to breach the playable 30FPS framerate. Looks like this NVIDIA tech showcase is not quite ready for the midrange.

There are a lot of spikes and the stuttering was noticeable as the game warped in objects in the distance. The FPS was fluctuating a lot. Seems Far Cry 4 needs more optimisation given how NVIDIA’s latest midrange cards struggle on it.

GRID Autosport

GRID Autosport is the next game in the GRID series from Codemasters that has specific effects reserved for Intel GPUs, which makes it great to judge the performance of NVIDIA and AMD cards as it provides an even playing field. We used the highest settings and used game’s benchmark in a 2 minute run.

The Asus Strix GTX 960 manages to win this photo finish but not by much. Both cards give decent performance, making us rethink our choice of using this game as a benchmark.

The graph is tightly packed in the frametimes with no major spikes. Even the fps looks quite stable.

Metro Last Light Redux

4A Games have really cranked up the eye candy in Metro Last Light, and the Redux version comes with even more improvements to visuals. The game looks beautiful in its cramped corridors as well as its open outdoor environments and cranking up the settings can easily bring a GPU to its knees in the menu screen itself. We used the highest settings available except for SSAA that was set at 2x, since 4x was simply unplayable. The game has no inbuilt benchmark, so we chose a particular area to conduct out tests run in for a time of 2 minutes.

Metro wouldn’t let us push it to its limits so we had to settle for a little lower. Curiously, the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G manages to win in the average FPS, but loses in the minimum FPS and 99^th percentile frametime to the Asus Strix GTX 960. The game stays barely playable and setting may need to be further lowered.

Barring a few noticeable spikes, the game stays consistent for the most part. There was noticeable stuttering where the spikes occurred. The FPS stays pretty consistent too.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Monolith have used some fancy effects to add some visual appeal to the dreary land of Mordor. Shadow of Mordor also uses PhysX for particle effects. The rain though doesn’t quite look natural and the game requires up to 6GB VRAM for using its Ultra HD textures. Curiously, it scales the game based on the screen’s natural resolution instead of offering resolution options. We used the highest available settings for the inbuilt benchmark, which runs for less than the standard 2 minutes of our other benchmarks.

Another even contest going by a whisker to the Asus Strix GTX 960. Mordor did run horribly when we tried pushing the textures beyond the RAM limit, but the game stayed easily playable for entirety of the run.

Other than the large spike at the start which was caused by activating the benchmarking in FRAPS, there are a couple of noticeable spikes and the game did stutter a bit. The FPS curve is relatively smooth.

Ryse: Son of Rome

Ryse pushes the newest iteration of the CryEngine to its limits as claimed by Crytek on the PC. It doesn’t have a benchmark mode, so we ran a fixed scenario for 2 minutes. The settings were set to the highest possible. This game scales the game as per the resolution of the screen instead of offering resolution options.

While the Game possesses a playable frame rate if one turns super sampling off, we decided to go for the maximum setting leading to the poor score you see here. Even then, the Asus Strix GTX 960 manages to sneak ahead of the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G.

There are lots of spikes but the 99^th percentile graph can be ignored given the unplayable FPS. The FPS graph remains pretty constant giving a good idea of the card’s limits.

Thief (2014)

Thief (2014) is a game that boasts support for AMD’s Mantle and its TrueAudio tech. It is a graphical showcase and has a built in benchmark, though the run time is less than our standard 2 minutes. We set all settings to the highest possible.

The Asus Strix GTX 960 barely beats the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G but drops to a lower minimum FPS. Both cards manage to keep the game in playable FPS.

The Frametime graph shows a large spike but is tight for the most part. The FPS graph doesn’t show huge fluctuations either.

Tomb Raider (2013)

Tomb Raider introduced us to a new Lara with fabled TressFX hair that behaves a lot more realistically than the pre-rendered mop we were used to. However the card does not seem to cope well with this technology and we had to drop it in our test run. We used highest possible settings with TressFX on. The Test run was shorter since the benchmark tool offered by the game runs for less than out 120s target time.

TressFX is really heavy on the NVIDIA cards with all performing relatively poorly. The GTX 960s perform at roughly 60% of the GTX 980 and there isn’t much between them though the MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G has a very slight edge. Both barely manage to retain a playable framerate and some options might need toning down.

The spikes on the frametime graph are caused by the CPU bottlenecking the GPU. The graphs are pretty smooth for the most part though they dip below playable framerates for half the run.

Total War: Rome II

Total War: Rome II is another CPU heavy game that offers significant visual goodness. It offers a benchmark tool that focuses more on GPU power though and that is what we used for our test run of 120s. We set the game to Extreme and Unit Size to Small so as to reduce the impact of the CPU. Unlimited Video Memory was off so the game could scale down visual settings if it reached a bottleneck.

The GTX 960 is a major improvement over the Striker in this CPU heavy game. While both GTX 960s dip below playable framerates, once again the MSI GTX 960 Gaming G2 emerges superior to the Asus Strix GTX 960 in a CPU intensive game though it loses out in the 99^th percentile frametime. The performance is roughly three quarters that of the GTX 980 once again, with the AMD card slotting between them.

The graph shows a lot of heavy spikes thanks to the bottleneck caused by the CPU. The FPS graph stays above playable for the most part but plunges below 30FPS in close up scenes.

[section label=”Acoustics” anchor=”Acoustics”]Acoustics

Our acoustics testing consisted of trying to determine how noticeable the noise output from the card was, when kept in a case at 1m distance with the side panel closed, as it might be in a real world scenario. Noise is a very relative characteristic that depends not only on the person hearing, but also the background noise of their surroundings. During the course of our testing, we found that the card barely went over 50% fan speed even at full load and overclocked, which was silent to our ears. However, setting the fans at 100% rpm makes a noticeable din that sounds like a vacuum cleaner in the distance. The Twin Frozr V design does have a uniqueness to the sound it makes as compared to other cards, perhaps due to the large diameter of its fans.

[section label=”Temperatures” anchor=”Temperatures”]Temperatures

At idle the card hovered in the 34°-36°C range with an ambient temperature of 24°C which is average. The card easily went to 66°C under load. While overclocked it would plateau out at 69°C as the fans kicked into action, though they never needed to go beyond 55% speed. This proves that MSI’s cooling solution is pretty good but still not quite as efficient as that of its rival Asus. This is an improvement over the stock cooling solution though.

[section label=”Power” anchor=”Power”]Power

The card comes in a single 8 pin power connector configuration which rates it at theoretical capacity of 225W TDP though the stock card is only rated at 120W. This extra capacity is probably to allow greater overclocking. The card requires a good PSU for overclocking. The power efficiency of the Maxell family is well known and this card does not stray from that norm.

[section label=”Overclocking” anchor=”Overclocking”]Overclocking

Using MSI Afterburner, we were able to push the core clock to 1380MHz with boost clock at 1443 MHz and the Samsung VRAM chips to 1900 MHz (7600 MHz effective) which is a total overclock of about 12.9% over stock for the core clock and about 8.4% for the VRAM. On the stock card, with its lower clocks these gains translate to 22.5% for the boost clock and 8.4% for the VRAM. These are good figures for overclocking without any alterations to the card or without increasing the voltage. The Voltage can be increased to improve stability of the overclock though these settings are borderline stable with a power target of 108%. For regular usage one should stick with more stable clocks of 1350MHz core and 1875MHz (7500MHz effective) for the VRAM. All our tests however, were conducted in the stock configuration.

We ran 3DMark to check improvements in the overclocked performance and the graphics score increased from 6089 to 6612, which is marginally higher than the Asus Strix 960 at the same overclock settings. It realistically translates into a .1 fps difference and lies within the statistical margin of error to be ignored. The extra 2 pins of the MSI power connector probably help boost it a bit.

We also ran the benchmark offered by the game Thief to get a real world idea of the performance gains. We used the Very High settings for our runs which concluded in less time than our standard 120 second runs. One must note that Thief is slightly unreliable as a benchmark due to inconsistency in results across various runs. That said, we got an improvement of about 1-2 fps on average with a very slightly lower 99^th percentile frametime.

[section label=”Feature Set” anchor=”Feature Set”]Feature Set

MSI has their own app for tweaking the settings of this card. Their Afterburner overclocking software is quite popular among overclockers worldwide. With NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience, the card can support features like Shadowplay and game streaming. The card’s LED strip can also be controlled to display some cool effects. The card also lets one use a technique called Dynamic Super Resolution that can be used to enhance the visual quality of shoddy console ports. It is also DirectX 12 ready and can work with G-Sync monitors that are just making their way to India. It also touts a new video engine that makes it ideal to power HTPCs by being able to output resolutions up to 5k with support for up to four 4k displays.

[section label=”Conclusion” anchor=”Conclusion”]Conclusion

The MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G is a good card, with a name that’s quite a mouthful to say. Its performance improves on the GK 104 parts it’s replacing with much less power than those cards. The average performance is about two third that of its illustrious big brother, the GTX 980.

The Twin Frozr V cooling design is efficient at keeping the card cool but has some scope for improvement. The lack of a heat sheath may not appeal to some buyers but the matte PCB finish isn’t a bad compromise. The only concern we have with the Zero Frozr fan technology is with its slightly higher actuation temperature that may not provide adequate buffer space for air cooling when the ambient temperatures are really high as in the summers in India, especially if one is looking to run the card overclocked.

The overclocking performance of the card is decent (Since these cards are factory overclocked the relative gains are much lesser) and the performance gains are quite noteworthy. The power efficiency of the GPU adds another dimension when judging its value for money, since we also get more value in the operating costs, but the higher price tag and the better out of the box performance of competitors is a major negative when it comes to judging the card’s value. Considering all the findings of our tests, we award this card the iLL Gaming Silver award.

We are extremely grateful to NVIDIA, MSI and Asus for providing us with test samples for reviewing prior to launch.