The GTX 960 came out on January 22nd, 2015, which means that I have been using this card for over 6 years at this point, and I am still happy with it capabilities for now. The 960 was made using TMSC’s 28 nm process, packs a whopping 1024 CUDA cores, has a base clock of 1127 MHz, boost to 1178, has 2 GB or 4 GB of GDDR5, has a memory bus width of 128-bit, and can suck back a measly 120 watts.
System Specs
Intel i7-6700k
2x4 GB DDR4 2133 MT/s Ram (8 GB total)
Gigabyte 960 WINDFORCE 2X Gaming Graphics Card with 2 GB or VRAM
I have a 250 GB SATA SSD for Windows and my games are all installed on my 1 TB HDD.
Little Rant
My system is nowhere near the best system you will ever see, but it was what I could afford at the time. I was not that smart when I built my computer, I should have gone with the 6600k and a 970, but it is too late now. You may also be asking yourself, “how does he play with only 8 GB of ram”? Ah, yes while it would be better to have more ram I have found if I just have discord and one of my games like Valorant, CSGO, Cold War, or GTA 5 open then I will at about 80–90% utilization. I would probably get a performance increase if I swapped out for more ram and faster ram while I'm at it, but I do not see the point at this time. I just play games for enjoyment I made a video the other day and everything was fine, it was not optimal, but it was fine. I have already set out a plan to build myself a new PC and the end of this year and I will probably be using one of Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake S CPU which means that Furthermore, I will have to use DDR5. So for the time being I have elected to stick with the 8 GB and save my money for the future build.
Why should I use a GTX 960 in 2021?
Well as you might know there is a shortage of GPUs and basically every electronic (printers could be an exception)and every component that goes into making an electronic. When there is a shortage, manufactures will raise the price to slow down the demand of these products and to make more money while they are making as much as they can. But there is one problem with the GPU market. GPUs are a necessity especially if your CPU does not have an IGPU, because of this the demand tends to be a little less elastic, meaning that people are more likely to buy a GPU even when the price is high. The 3060 at Best Buy is $400+ meanwhile on eBay the same cards are selling for $650 to $800. Some people are more elastic and do not want to spend that much money or do not have that type of money to blow on a card that they can buy right now. That is why I present you with the GTX 960, I know that it is 6 years old, but it is still a good card and can hold you off while you wait to get your shinny new card for close to or at MSRP. On eBay the 960 is around $80 to $120 and the 1060 which I personally think is a better deal is around $100 to $150. Just make sure when you are buying your card that you look into the persons profile and ask for proof that the card is running with no problems, and I would also recommend getting the 4 GB card for the 960 and the 6 GB card for the 1060.
Performance
Now that my little mini rant and explanation are over with, let’s get into the benchmarks. I will start with Valorant because it is a popular game right now and it gives us an idea of what the 960 can do in an esports title.
I went down to the shooting range for some practice and while I was down there I recorded an AVG FPS of 245 and 1% Lows at 30 Fps. We can clearly see that 1% of the frames are equally to or less than 30 FPS which is not great, but the gameplay still feels smooth. If you wanted more FPS then you could lower some settings.
Next up, we have Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which is a pretty graphically intense game. So this will give us some idea how modern games will play on this 960.
For my testing, I went into a custom match on Nuketown ’84 for a 10-minute match. This will not represent all the maps but this will show you some capabilities of this card. I got an average of 70 FPS and had 1% lows of 1 FPS. When the settings are on low like I am showing above you can play the game, but there will be some hitches every once in a while. I major issue that I saw while testing was tearing. Tearing occurs when the GPU and monitor are out of sync which can cause 2 frames to be displayed simultaneously, this can occur at frame rates above or below your monitor’s refresh rate. To fix this issue you can turn on V-sync which should eliminate the screen tearing, but it will increase the input lag, and you may also experience stuttering when the FPS falls below your monitor’s refresh rate. An alternative would be Adaptive VSync, or Fast Sync, which you can enable in the Nvidia control panel. The best option of your monitor supports it would be G-sync for free sync.
Next up we have CSGO which is another esports title that a lot of people play just like Valorant.
My settings are a mix of medium and high. I ran the FPS benchmark, which you can download on the community workshop. It ran with an average of 182 FPS, but you should know I saw the FPS swing to the 40s when I went through the center of the smoke. CSGO runs well and again if you want more FPS then you can turn down some settings, but I would keep MSAA on because I could not be able to play with all the jagged edges.
Finally, we have good old GTA 5 which came out on PC around the same time that my 960 came out.
During the in game benchmark test I was getting and average of 82 FPS which is quite good for a 6-year-old card, but then again the game also came out on PC 6 years ago. I did not record the average FPS for online but when I play the FPS tend to stay around 60 to 70 which is definitely playable.
Should you but it?
The questions can only be answered by you, the end user, but I will help you a little. If you want to build and computer or have built one but can’t get a graphics card or do not want to spend the money for a new one then I would recommend the 960 4 GB or even better the 1060 6 GB. This is a good investment because it means you get to enjoy the act of gaming, and it means you get to save some money. Also remember it won’t be a $100 to $150 loss because you can resell it after you have bought a newer card. When buying a GPU on eBay or Craigslist make sure to check the seller’s reputation if you can, check to see if the card works (no artifacts and all fans working), ask what the card was used for (mining, gaming video editing?), and make sure to clean it and repaste it when you get home. Now go out and have some fun gaming!
