PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 Graphics Card Review

Overview

 

PNY may have been around for thirty years and pcG has only been around for three years, yet the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 Graphics Card is the first product we have ever seen from this global technology leader. What we have here is a one of Nvidia’s latest GPUs based upon the ever popular Maxwell architecture. This particular example (GF960GTX2GEPB) is based upon the Nvidia Geforece GTX 960 and is equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM running at 1753 (7010 effective). The Core Clock speed is 1127MHz while the Boost clock is 1178MHz and the card itself sports a stock blower style cooler.

 

 

 

The front of the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 box is about as understated as they come (maybe a little too understated!) with the front just featuring a PNY logo and their ‘XLR8 (or accelerate, get it!?) play like you mean it’ slogan. In the bottom right we find a simple sticker sealing the box and providing basic card information (DVI / 3 x DisplayPort / HDMI – 2GB GDDR5 Memory – PCI Express 3.0) and highlighting support for Nvidia’s Gamestream, Gameworks, G-Sync and DirectX 12.

The back of the box is even more understated than the front and to be fair that’s actually quite difficult, but PNY have pulled it off! 😉 With the back of the box being just plain black apart from some basic logos and information etc. Although it is nice to see the 3 year warranty emblem in the bottom right corner.

 

Inside the box there’s not much packaging (although it’s adequate) and not much other than the Graphics card itself, that’s wrapped in a anti-static bubble-wrap bag. In addition to this there’s a Driver disc, Quick Install Guide and a DVI – D-Sub (analogue) adapter.

At the time of review the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 is retailing for approximately £160.00 from dabs.com and comes with a 3 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of PNY

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

First impressions are a little disappointing to be honest as the card’s design seems to follow that of the box and that’s to say it’s somewhat understated (and to be fair that’s putting it politely!). Let’s take a tour around the outside of the card and see what’s what, shall we…

 

 

Looking at the front of the all black PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 we can see that the main body of the card is covered by a fully enclosed plastic shroud. The main section of the shroud is covered with a black sticker showing the PNY logo and the ‘XLR8 Play Like you mean it’ slogan along with the card type and memory size (2048MB).

At the far end of the card there’s a single impeller that sucks in cool air from inside the case and exhausts it out of the back.

Looking at the sides of the card and the PCIE 3.0 connector there’s very little to see other than the two screws that help hold the shroud in place, and a raft of part/sku/model numbers on the left. What’s both interesting and confusing is that after studying all of the number on the card and the box none of them seem to match!?

Looking at the other side of the card (the bit we tend to stare at!), there’s even less to see other than the single 6-pin power plug that’s required to power the card. I do feel that PNY really could have done a little more to give their card a little bit of extra bling, as it does indeed look a little dull (sorry PNY).

Looking at the ends of the card, at one end we find the main outputs for the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960; x1 DVI-D, x3 DisplayPort and x1 HDMI, this end of the card is also peppered with triangular holes, allowing that blower to exhaust as much hot air as possible out of the back of the card. At the other end of the card there really is nothing to see, no really there isn’t…

 

Hardware Installation

 

Installation into our Test Rig‘s motherboard and case was pretty simple, despite the fact that the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 is actually rather long (especially for a GTX 960) at 245mm. Compared to the Zotac 960 (at 208mm) it seems too long! The card was then simply powered up by a single 6-pin PCIE power plug.

Test Rig Setup

Case	Cooler Master HAF XB	Power Supply	Corsair Professional Series AX 760i
Motherboard	ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer	CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler	Raijintek Themis	RAM	HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
Graphics Card	PNY GEFORCE GTX 960	SSD	HyperX FURY 120GB

 

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

Our Test Rig was treated to a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional N 64Bit (Service Pack 1) with all associated drivers also installed. Nvidia’s 347.52 was downloaded and installed and used throughout testing.

For testing purposes we use MSI Afterburner (here), to help us with our testing and overclocking.

 

Overclocking the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 using MSI Afterburner (Version 4.1.0)

 

 

Hardware Performance

 

PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 – STOCK (Core: 1178MHz / Mem: 7010MHz)

Benchmark	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temp	Delta Temp	Result
Batman Arkham Origins	21.00	75.00	54.00	123.00 FPS (average)
Tomb Raider	21.00	70.00	49.00	58.6 FPS (average)
Metro Last Light	21.00	75.00	74.00	53.00 (average)
UNiGiNE Heaven	21.00	70.00	49.00	816
3DMark (Fire Strike)	21.00	66.00	45.00	6174

 

PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 – OVERCLOCKED (Core: 1428MHz / Mem: 8010MHz)

Benchmark	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temp	Delta Temp	Result
Batman Arkham Origins	22.00	65.00	43.00	141.00 FPS (average)
Tomb Raider	22.00	63.00	41.00	67.5 FPS (average)
Metro Last Light	22.00	66.00	44.00	61.67 (average)
UNiGiNE Heaven	22.00	60.00	38.00	955
3DMark (Fire Strike)	22.00	59.00	37.00	7101

 

Comparative Test Results (at stock):

NOTE: Please note that all of these benchmarks are valid and correct at the time of review and we do not use historical data. Each benchmark is re-run every time (against our Test Cards) for each new GPU review using the latest Drivers at that time. Therefore the scores may fluctuate between reviews as Driver optimizations come into play…

 

BATMAN ARKHAM ORIGINS

TOMB RAIDER

METRO: LAST LIGHT

UNIGINE HEAVEN 4.0

3DMARK (Firestrike)

 

Out of the box the PNY GEFORCE GTX isn’t a great performer, although we’d be foolish to expect too much from Nvidia’s budget Graphics Card. But the PNY was slower than the Zotac GTX 960 AMP! in every test, this is due to the stock nature of the PNY compared to the (out of the box) overclocked nature of the Zotac. Therefore once we get down and dirty with the cards and look at overclocking the playing field should be levelled (logically)…

And it sure is! Looking at the results for both card’s overclocked, the lie if the land is pretty much even. In fact the PNY now trumps the Zotac in four of the five tests and matches it in the Batman test, now that’s better! What this really proves is that both cards have the ability to overclock to a similar level, it’s just with the Zotac it’s guaranteed out of the box and with the PNY it isn’t. But then with the PNY you’re not paying for it either! 😉

While running overclocked it’s worth noting that we are running the fans (fan the case of the PNY) at 100%. Now while this did an amazing job of keeping temps lower than stock temps at less than 66 degrees Celsius, there’s obviously a lot of associated (and probably unwanted) noise. At full speed the single impeller style fan on the PNY stock cooler emits approximately 56dB of noise. Of course the temperature/noise equation can be balanced (to your liking) via MSI Afterburner.

 

Final Thoughts

 

The PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 has proved itself to be a bit of a wolf in a black sheep’s clothing; it may look a little dull, but it sure can pack a punch once overclocked… 😉

The PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 arrived at pcG in a rather nondescript black box, inside there’s a rather nondescript Graphics Card too, a Drivers CD, a Quick Start Guide and a DVI – D-Sub adapter. Yes that’s right even the PNY 960 itself is a little nondescript, dare I say it’s a little dull to look at thanks to its plain black plastic exterior and a rather cheap looking black sticker with the XLR8 logo on it.

OK so the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 may not be the best looking Graphics Card on the planet, but the real question here is how does it perform?

Out of the box the PNY GEFORCE GTX 960’s performance is a little lacklustre, but to be fair this is due to the stock nature of the card. Although it’s still consistently better than AMD’s 270X.

The PNY 960 really comes to life though with a bit of overclocking. I was able to add a further 250MHz to the Boost Clock and a further 500MHz to the memory. The end result was a 960 with a theoretical Core Boost Clock of 1428MHz and a Memory Clock of 8010MHz, although in testing (thanks to good thermals) I saw the card boosting as high as 1541MHz! This saw the PNY 960 surpass the performance of the Zotac 760 in all but one of our benchmarks where that score was simply matched. Overall then, after a bit of tweaking we end up with an impressive performing GTX 960.

Of course during testing we are running fan speeds at 100% which is obviously a little noisy. The PNY GEFORCE GTX 960’s single impeller styled fan output 56dB with the fan at 100%, but the end result is that temperatures never rose above 66 degrees Celsius and that’s pretty impressive!

The PNY GEFORCE GTX 960 may not be the best looking Graphics Card around, but the bottom line is that it’s got it where it counts!

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to PNY for providing this sample for review