Gigabyte GTX 960 4GB Windforce OC Review

There are tons of GPU choice available these days.  With the pending launch of Nvidia’s Pascal lineup on the horizon some of the Maxwell GPU’s are starting to fall in price.  You can get some phenomenal values at this point, and that trend will only continue.

I purchased this Gigabyte GTX 960 4GB Windforce OC for $200 with a $20 rebate.  At $180 the price to performance ratio is off the charts.  Since purchase, the card has gone on an even deeper sale.  It is currently priced at $184 with a $20 rebate.  You simply can not beat that value.

This is also a short PCB card.  Coming in at under 7″ in length.  You can place this card comfortably in most small form factor builds.  With a TDP of 120W and a single 6 pin connector, you will be able to power the 960 with most power supplies even budget models.

Performance

In testing the Gigabyte GTX 960 Windforce OC was true to its name.  The benchmarks indicated a slight performance bump when compared to a stock 960.  The slight overclock is definitely doing it’s job.  Check out the video above for the official test results.

Fans and Noise

The fans performed exactly as you would expect dual 80mm fans to perform.  They were fairly quiet at idle, and pretty loud under load.  Fortunately you basically have to do a torture test to make the power frugal 960 generate a ton of heat.

While playing League of Legends the fans remind at there idle speed the entire time.  Curiously there is no “fan off” mode as you see with most modern cards these days.

3D Mark Firestrike turned things up a notch and got the cards fans to really spin up.  They are audible if you have your system muted, but you most likely won’t notice them over your in game audio.  You can see the full firestrike results in the video above.

Learn More

For my complete impressions including benchmarks, check out the video below, or follow the link above to buy your own 960.