NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960: specs and benchmarks

Summary
NVIDIA started GeForce GTX 960 sales 22 January 2015 at a recommended price of $199. This is Maxwell 2.0 architecture desktop card based on 28 nm manufacturing process and primarily aimed at gamers. 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 7.0 GB/s are supplied, and together with 128 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 112 GB / s.
Compatibility-wise, this is 2-slot card attached via PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 9.5" (24.1 cm). 1x 6-pins power connector is required, and power consumption is at 120 Watt.
It provides good gaming and benchmark performance at 27.20 percent of a leader's which is NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000.
General info
Technical specs
Memory
Technologies
Benchmarks
Mining
Gaming
AMD equivalent
Advices and comments
General info
Of GeForce GTX 960's architecture, market type and release date.
Value for money (0-100)
37.32
Architecture
Maxwell 2.0
Code name
GM206
Type
Desktop
Release date
22 January 2015
Technical specs
GeForce GTX 960's general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of GeForce GTX 960's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
CUDA cores
1024
Transistor count
2,940 million
of 21100
Compatibility, dimensions and requirements
Information on GeForce GTX 960's compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop video cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
Bus support
PCI Express 3.0
Interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Length
9.5" (24.1 cm)
Height
4.376" (11.1 cm)
Recommended system power (PSU)
400 Watt
Supplementary power connectors
1x 6-pins
SLI options
2x
Memory
Parameters of memory installed on GeForce GTX 960: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors don't have dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM.
Memory type
GDDR5
Memory clock speed
7.0 GB/s
of 14000
Shared memory
-
Video outputs and ports
Types and number of video connectors present on GeForce GTX 960.
Display Connectors
1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort
Display Connectors
Dual Link DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, 3x DisplayPort 1.2
Multi monitor support
4 displays
HDCP
+
Maximum VGA resolution
2048x1536
Audio input for HDMI
Internal
Technologies
Technological solutions and APIs supported by GeForce GTX 960. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.
GameStream
+
GeForce ShadowPlay
+
GPU Boost
2.0
GameWorks
+
CUDA
+
API support
APIs supported by GeForce GTX 960, sometimes including their particular versions.
DirectX
12.0 (12_1)
OpenGL
4.4
of 4.6
Vulkan
+
Benchmark performance
Non-gaming benchmarks performance of GeForce GTX 960. Note that overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range.
Overall benchmark performance
27.20
3DMark Ice Storm GPU
310860
3DMark Cloud Gate GPU
49918
3DMark Fire Strike Score
6699
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
7916
3DMark 11 Performance GPU
10768
3DMark Vantage Performance
30751
Unigine Heaven 4.0
866
Passmark
5812
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score
7740
Octane Render OctaneBench
48
Mining hashrates
Cryptocurrency mining performance of GeForce GTX 960. Usually measured in megahashes per second.
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256)
318 Mh/s
Decred / DCR (Decred)
0.92 Gh/s
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto)
8 Mh/s
Monero / XMR (CryptoNight)
0.27 kh/s
Zcash / ZEC (Equihash)
141.47 Sol/s
Game benchmarks
Let's see how good GeForce GTX 960 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS. Comparisons with system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect real performance inaccurately.
Relative perfomance
Overall GeForce GTX 960 performance compared to its nearest competitors. All GPU types participate.
AMD equivalent
We believe that the nearest equivalent to GeForce GTX 960 from AMD is Radeon R9 280X, which is nearly equal in speed and higher by 1 position in our rating.