TheLegendOfMart
Banned
Which if the benchmarks are true is as fast as 256bit bus 770 that has more cores and double the TMUs, but don't let facts cloud the circlejerk of ignorance.
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GTX 960 specs officially announced, 2.3Tflops, 2GB, 128-bit
- Thread starter Ricky Ricardo
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Which if the benchmarks are true is as fast as 256bit bus 770 that has more cores and double the TMUs, but don't let facts cloud the circlejerk of ignorance.
michaelius
Banned
People have short memories. We had same crap before 970/980 release.
You seem to be missing the point. The minimum requirements for many new games will be moving up to 3+ GB of ram in the next 12 to 24 months. This card has 2 GB of ram. It's frankly pretty shitty that nvidia is even releasing a new 2 GB gaming card at this point. It's also ridiculous that anyone is still recommending 2 GB cards to anyone if they have been watching the gaming trends for the last 12 months:
And it's only going to get much much worse.
Yeah, these days. Right before all the 2nd year console games start hitting that are actually designed from the ground up for the new consoles. I actually think many devs will make an effort to accommodate 2GB users this year, but all bets will be off in 2016.
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
I agree, they are doing it to force people up to the next tier which is a shitty tactic, there will no doubt be non-reference 4GB versions.
I wouldn't recommend any mid tier card for gaming but for those on a budget with 1080p monitors who don't care about maxing the graphics settings, depending on price, it would be a cracking little stopgap card if people are waiting for the next significant architectural change.
Well yea, that's kind of the problem - depending on pricing, a 280X may well be a more attractive option. And that's pretty bad since the 280X is essentially a 2 and a half year old card at this point.
And while its true that something like a 750Ti can run most all multiplatforms at equivalent settings/performance as the PS4 version, I don't expect that will continue for a long time as devs learn to get more out of the consoles. That 2GB is already limiting in terms of what sort of texture settings you can run and that is only going to get worse. And general performance is likely not going to hold up unless you're happy turning the resolution down. Something like the 750Ti or this 960 have to be considered budget cards, not proper midrange.
Yea, thinking that a 660Ti is going to compete with this is silly just because of the on-paper numbers, but I can see why somebody would be hesitant to upgrade til there's something better.
People should have stopped recommending 2GB configurations 1.5-2 years ago, really. I have two 2GB 670s and while they've the grunt, that VRAM ceiling is already a problem in a few games, so needless to say I regret not paying the premium for a 4GB card back when I bought the first one (late 2012) -- if I did have 4GB cards I'd probably be able to ride them out until the release of the 970's successor.
With that memory bandwidth and that amount of VRAM it's going to be limited even at FullHD resolutions with nice details which wouldn't happen if the bandwidth and memory amount were higher.
martino
Member
I'm not happy with the following but with high slowly moving from 400 to 700 ++ , doesn't it make sense budget move from 100 to 200++
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
Assuming the compression was the same as Kepler, it's much improved. Nvidia say 980 vs 680 uses 25% less bytes per frame compared.
Dictator93
Member
I have actually thinking about not getting SLI next time. For the first time in about 8 years. :/
I have personally noted SLI performance/ scaling and support to be worse from Nvidia over time I see it as Nvidias duty to make sure game engines support it, not necessarily the dev.
Same problem in the CPU arena. Imagine the pricing if AMD ever folds.
michaelius
Banned
We have amazing gpus available in 250-350$ range in form of 970/290
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Will they? I can't think of more than a couple of games that have minimum of 2GB currently.
AC: Unity - 2GB
MGS: GZ - 2GB
Evolve - 1GB
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - 1GB
GTAV - 1GB
Far Cry 4 - 1GB
Ryse: Son of Rome - 1GB
Wolfenstein TNO - 1GB
CoD: AW - 1GB
Dying Light - 1GB
Lords of the Fallen - 1GB
The Evil Within - 1GB
Alien: Isolation - 1GB
Dragon Age: Inquisition - 512mb
The Crew - 512mb
Titanfall - 512mb
I've just scoured a few GOTY lists and games in my steam profile but I probably missed a couple of technically demanding titles here and there. Sometimes they only listed a model that had a 1GB or 2GB, and I assumed 1GB unless I knew it was 2.
I'm not sure it's guaranteed that the min requirements will accelerate quickly in the immediate future. Current gen console ports are obviously able to run with 1-2GB of VRAM. Even current-gen only games from developers of questionable technical repute (cough). It took until what, 2012-2013 before we started really breaking 512mb minimum requirements, which games had been sitting at for years prior? The number of people with >2GB cards is quite small in proportion to the total gaming population and there is definitely an incentive to support them in games. There will be some games that come out with a 3GB or 4GB minimum over the next two years definitely, but I'm hardly convinced it's going to be some great 2015 VRAM holocaust that leaves the majority of PC gamers in the cold and literally unable to run most console ports.
obligatory "lol, gaming at minimum settings" snipe 
Well the current high end Nvidia offerings are $320 and $550 respectively. So I wouldn't say its moving to $700+.
I think the pricing structure of GPU lines isn't going to be this baseline, predictable thing. The nature of competition and the various degrees of architectural improvement should lead to a state where pricing needs to be properly judged on an individual basis.
And they really cant afford to prop up the lower end like that anyways. Affordable cards still make up a vast part of their market and pricing things out of reach would be shooting themselves in the foot, especially since it leaves the door open for AMD to come in and pick up the entire market in one fell swoop.
Dictator93
Member
Anecdotally (and this says something to how opaque recommended and minimum requirements are), I can play MGS V GZ @ 1400p 60 with 1280mb VRAM. I just have everything on Very high (is it called extra? I forget) and turn texture resolution down to medium.
It would be nice if devs actually released what settings REQUIRE which hardware.
Extremely impressive....Unlike this 960.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
There were articles earlier in the year about The Evil Within requiring a 670 w/ 4GB Vram, minimum but now on steam it says 1GB. Lol.
The new consoles have 5+ GB of unified ram available to the devs. Unless the PC is the lead platform with a target of under 2 GB of vram, I don't see 2 GB holding out very long. You bring up 512 MB of ram, but that was the total amount of unified ram in the 360/PS3. These consoles have 8 GB with 5+ GB available to the devs. Using last gen as a metric, 4 GB would seem to be the safe place to be for the foreseeable future. It mainly depends on how far devs are willing to go to maintain performance on 2 GB cards. I've never gotten the impression that most PC publishers are very scared of releasing stuff as is and letting the chips fall where they may.
dgrdsv
Member
The fuck is going on here?
A. 2 GB for a value card is enough. You don't know the prices yet. You don't know what will sit between 960 and 970.
B. As it usually is with these cards partners are free to put a gazillion GBs of RAM on the board if they feel the need for this. So 4 and 8 GB versions of 960 is not something that can't happen.
A. 2 GB for a value card is enough. You don't know the prices yet. You don't know what will sit between 960 and 970.
B. As it usually is with these cards partners are free to put a gazillion GBs of RAM on the board if they feel the need for this. So 4 and 8 GB versions of 960 is not something that can't happen.
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
You keep saying 5GB of unified ram, that's not just for VRAM, that is for regular RAM as well where the game data is stored.
At least 3GB of that was used for storing game data which leaves 1.5GB of VRAM and Infamous is a pretty game.
PCs have a separate memory pool for storing game data and dedicated VRAM.
PS3 didn't have unified memory, it had two separate pools of 256MB of RAM, one for CPU and one for GPU. It could dip into the CPU RAM however.
Unknown One
Member
If this card is 200 dollars, I say it's a piece of crap.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
I believe ~5.5 is the upper limit for either system currently. In any case, it usually requires only a modification for texture quality to get better-than-console performance out of decent 2GB cards on the market right now. And in quite a few games, 2GB card gets equal or better texture quality. I'm not convinced that matching the entire RAM pool is a realistic requirement, if it is we're certainly not seeing evidence of that yet. I think the 3GB 780 is going to hold up for a surprisingly long time, and that 4GB is going to end up being the "512mb" of this generation, yielding better-than-console performance right through to the successor consoles.
You keep saying 5GB of unified ram.
At least 3GB of that was used for storing game data which leaves 1.5GB of VRAM and Infamous is a pretty game.
PCs have a separate memory pool for storing game data and dedicated VRAM.
PS3 didn't have unified memory, it had two separate pools of 256MB of RAM, one for CPU and one for GPU. It could dip into the CPU RAM however.
Wouldn't "loaded data" be textures and models and such? That would seem to indicate that up to 2.5 GB just of that is stuff that might be loaded in vram at any particular time.
I don't disagree. My main point is that recommending 2 GB of vram for a gaming card should be over at this point. It's an amount of vram that we can already see being unsuitable for some games in the not very distant future. This is a situation where recommending people spend a little more for 3+ GB or wait for the next revision with more vram is good advice.
d00d3n
Member
Yeah, I don't think I will get SLI either. Waiting for fixes and proper scaling is very frustrating. The new games you buy start to feel like a burden ... Something that goes directly to an ever-increasing backlog. You return after a month and try the patch, the new nvidia compatibility bit and some other fixes, but chances are that it won't even be fixed at that point. Some major releases from 2014 such as Watch_Dogs were never fixed in any meaningful way. Interesting games like Titanfall and Shadow of Mordor took several months to be fixed ... At the time when you can play the games properly the excitement is gone. At this point it is almost preferable with developers who outright state that SLI will never be supported, for example Machine Games.
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
But it could be, so that slide isn't a very good example to prove your point. There are 2.5 GB of assets stored in memory only using 4.5 of the 5.5 GB available. That means they could potentially have had 3.5 GB of assets in ram without changing anything else. No real point in going further since neither of us knows enough to have a useful discussion about this. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will weigh in at some point.
Wow, that MGS GZ slide shows the 750 ti doing over 30 fps at 1080p. It's a $120 card!
Anyway 960 should replace the 660 pretty well. I would definitely wait for reference designs and get one that OC well. I got a 760, but will wait until after the Rift launches to eventually grab what I need.
Anyway 960 should replace the 660 pretty well. I would definitely wait for reference designs and get one that OC well. I got a 760, but will wait until after the Rift launches to eventually grab what I need.
Personally, I dont think there something wrong with recommending 2gb, but those cards must be recommended as low end.
For new mid-end cards in 2015 2GB is unacceptable. 3GB is minimum.
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Yeah, but this includes Textures that are pre-streamed, audio and other data that You generally keep in DDR3 memory on PC.
Also I:SS has ridiculously high render targets, they should be much lower, like at least 100mb lower.
lightchris
Member
Pricing hasn't been announced yet.
I'm in a similar situation, but the GTX 960 just isn't what the GTX 460 was back then. The top model (GTX 480) was only about 50% better than the 460 (both in shader processors and memory). Now, the GTX 980 is exactly twice as good as the GTX 960, and the gap between 970 and 960 is still large. That's why I think it's a good possibility that there will be a GTX 960 Ti to fill that gap eventually (but that's only speculation right now).
Its speculation, but it's something I'd put money on if the 960's specs are true. A 960Ti seems almost certain at this point.
blastprocessor
The Amiga Brotherhood
Compared to my Nividia GTX 660 OEM (2.1tflops @ 130 TDP) vs Nividia GTX 960 (2.3 tflops @ 120 TDP).
It's a very disappointing update so l won't bother upgrading.
NVidia need to work harder.
Edit: Great progress Nvidia since August 2012 - NOT!
It's a very disappointing update so l won't bother upgrading.
NVidia need to work harder.
Edit: Great progress Nvidia since August 2012 - NOT!
ashecitism
Member
Might be the 960Ti.
Not that it isn't disappointing, but using flops as the main performance indicator isn't a good idea. A 960 will likely be a fair bit more powerful than your 660.
That was my initial impression with the benchmark leaks we got a few weeks ago.
LicenceToK1ll
Member
2GB on 128bit bus? that is quite low.... , i'm currently running a 280X 3GB and i'm glad i did because it is very easy to max VRAM even on only 1080P. It is nice to have so breathing room, 2GB doenst seem very futureproof but the bare minimum i'd say right now.
Will they? I can't think of more than a couple of games that have minimum of 2GB currently.
AC: Unity - 2GB
MGS: GZ - 2GB
Evolve - 1GB
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - 1GB
GTAV - 1GB
Far Cry 4 - 1GB
Ryse: Son of Rome - 1GB
Wolfenstein TNO - 1GB
CoD: AW - 1GB
Dying Light - 1GB
Lords of the Fallen - 1GB
The Evil Within - 1GB
Alien: Isolation - 1GB
Dragon Age: Inquisition - 512mb
The Crew - 512mb
Titanfall - 512mb
I've just scoured a few GOTY lists and games in my steam profile but I probably missed a couple of technically demanding titles here and there. Sometimes they only listed a model that had a 1GB or 2GB, and I assumed 1GB unless I knew it was 2.
I'm not sure it's guaranteed that the min requirements will accelerate quickly in the immediate future. Current gen console ports are obviously able to run with 1-2GB of VRAM. Even current-gen only games from developers of questionable technical repute (cough). It took until what, 2012-2013 before we started really breaking 512mb minimum requirements, which games had been sitting at for years prior? The number of people with >2GB cards is quite small in proportion to the total gaming population and there is definitely an incentive to support them in games. There will be some games that come out with a 3GB or 4GB minimum over the next two years definitely, but I'm hardly convinced it's going to be some great 2015 VRAM holocaust that leaves the majority of PC gamers in the cold and literally unable to run most console ports.
obligatory "lol, gaming at minimum settings" snipe
I'd actually call the accuracy of minimum specs into question as I am able to run most of these at good frame rates way below the spec. MGS GZ is a glaring one as I can run it with a 1gb card and dual core CPU instead of 2gb and quad.
Saintruski
Unconfirmed Member
think Nvidia is doing some milking. Their higher card selling well, and AMD poses no competition yet. Maybe it is a business strategy to keep the 970's moving? I wouldn't know i mean it barely squeaks by the r9 280...But i guess if ive learned anything this line of cards is peak floating point doesn't mean anything in actual performance, and paper specs really dont mean anything anymore unless you understand the architecture. Wonder how stacked the GPU is in the cache area to make up for the 128bit bus...
Case: Corsair 900D
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage V Extreme
CPU: Intel 5960x @ 4.6GHz
GPU: EVGA 980 Classfied @ 1650MHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR4 @ 3000MHz
PSU: EVGA 1600 G2
Raid Card: SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8
OS and Software Drive: Samsung M.2 XP941 512GB
Game Drives: 3 x Intel 730 Series 480GB Raid0
Mass Storage: 8 x Seagate 3TB Drives
Case: Corsair 900D
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage V Extreme
CPU: Intel 5960x @ 4.6GHz
GPU: EVGA 980 Classfied @ 1650MHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR4 @ 3000MHz
PSU: EVGA 1600 G2
Raid Card: SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8
OS and Software Drive: Samsung M.2 XP941 512GB
Game Drives: 3 x Intel 730 Series 480GB Raid0
Mass Storage: 8 x Seagate 3TB Drives
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
Good for bidet conscious and folks who don't care about maxing out games.
I'd wait for real benchmarks rather than speculating.
Saintruski
Unconfirmed Member
Not quite, AMD still has cards that beat this for a good price.
Case: Corsair 900D
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage V Extreme
CPU: Intel 5960x @ 4.6GHz
GPU: EVGA 980 Classfied @ 1650MHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR4 @ 3000MHz
PSU: EVGA 1600 G2
Raid Card: SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8
OS and Software Drive: Samsung M.2 XP941 512GB
Game Drives: 3 x Intel 730 Series 480GB Raid0
Mass Storage: 8 x Seagate 3TB Drives
The reference model for that card only had 1.5GB...