Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition Review

Nvidia's mid range GTX960 has been some time coming – almost a year after Maxwell was introduced with the GTX750ti. The GTX960 specifically targets the gaming audience with a budget restriction of £200. For many this is the gaming ‘sweet spot'.

Pricing information started to reach us on Wednesday and Nvidia confirmed that reference grade GTX960 solutions will be sold around the £159.99 inc vat mark in the UK. They didn't send us a sample of a reference card, placing the focus on custom, third party partner solutions.

According to Nvidia prices of custom partner cards in the UK will vary between £159.99 and £189.99- and this ASUS card is right at the high end of the pricing scale.

The Asus GTX960 Strix OC is a graphics card that I enjoyed testing. After spending so much time recently with high powered £500+ solutions, it was refreshing to get back into the ‘real world' by taking a look at an affordable, quiet running GPU. While the technical data shows slightly higher noise emissions over the GTX750Ti Strix OC, in reality you would be hard pressed to hear either … even when playing games such as Tomb Raider at 1080p, with image quality settings dialed to the limit. It is worth mentioning that under lighter gaming loads the dual fans deactivate completely.

Those gamers looking for a monumental jump forward in frame rate performance are likely to be disappointed. The Asus GTX960 Strix OC is pretty much a match for the Sapphire Dual X R9 285, a card we analysed back in September 2014. That said, there is no doubt the GTX960 is noticeably faster than the last gen GTX760. If you are an Nvidia fan and want to upgrade then it is certainly a good move forward.

We do feel the need to point out that purely focusing on frame rate prowess is really only part of the overall picture, as the new GTX960 consumes around 40-45 watts less than a R9 285 or GTX760, while running much cooler and quieter.

As I don't have a reference GTX960 on hand, it is difficult to analyse how much ASUS have pushed the design forward. All things considered, I would be happy using the Asus GTX960 Strix OC in my own gaming system attached to a large HDTV.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• Maxwell architecture is very efficient.
• Very well built.
• very quiet under load, silent when idle.
• low power consumption.
• overclocks quite well.

Cons:

• Comparable frame rate performance to an overclocked R9 285.

Kitguru says: Competitively priced, cool running and almost silent, the Asus GTX960 Strix OC comes highly recommended.

Become a Patron!