MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G Graphics Card Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]

Conclusion

Another MSI Gaming branded/themed graphics card has graced the test bench and if you have seen my other reviews, you will know straight off the bat that I like the Twin Frozr V cooler design; I have made it pretty clear that this is one of the best GPU coolers currently on the market but that only accounts for a portion of today’s review; the other is the actual GTX 960 itself and how it copes with AMD price dropping their cards like some kind of dubstep boom. With that in mind, does the GTX 960 still manage to stand on its feet or has AMD fired shots which render this a worthwhile purchase?

Well performance wise, it is a pretty contested battle now in terms of bang for buck. Last week I would have said different things but I do still feel the GTX 960 has a place in the market. Yes the AMD R9 285 is now in a much better position than it once was but the GTX 960 does seem to offer just a little bit more overall for me; the Gaming series card especially. Performance in games is pretty even with the GTX 960 taking the slight advantage when overclocked; MSI has better performance than the ASUS in this regard with a higher power delivery and of course, more headroom to go along with it. The 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM could be somewhat of a limiting factor as 1080p games start utilising more VRAM, especially games like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Battlefield 4, but the core does enough to compensate at 1080p, but at higher resolutions such as 1440p, this card is far from ideal and if you have £300 to drop on a 1440p monitor, look at the GTX 970 or AMD R9 290 instead. The MSI card is also in a better position than the ASUS Strix model in terms of price also, with it being one of the cheaper models but given the performance of the cooler, the core and of course with all that headroom, it’s a value award from me at around £170-175 depending on your choice of retailer.

Design wise, there isn’t too much to elaborate on in terms of the Twin Frozr V cooler; it performs great, it looks great but on this particular card, the card is pretty much the same size as the GTX 970 Gaming which unlike the ASUS Strix card, is a considerable waste of space in my opinion. Aside from that, I really do like what MSI do with their Twin Frozr cards and the addition to the gaming series of options of other colours is a good thing; anniversary editions are limited but the green is a nice twist on the MSI Gaming range.

So is the MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G the best card under £200? Not quite on paper but given the lower power consumption, this also helps keep the GTX 960 cooler too giving it good efficiency; for 1080p, any of the cards in the £150-200 price point should be enough regardless. One thing I will say though is it is no secret that I prefer NVIDIA’s bundle/feature set as Shadowplay is starting to come into its own; me myself regularly stream on Twitch TV while using it and the quality is fantastic with minimal resource hogging. Add DSR (Dynamic super resolution) and of course GPU Boost 2.0 technology, the NVIDIA card still floats on the surface happily for me! A worthwhile purchase? Yes, the MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G is recommended from me unless you of course have an extra £50 to spend in which the AMD R9 290 is a much better option performance wise; if you don’t mind a mini nuclear reactor inside your PC of course.

Huge thanks to MSI for sending the GTX 960 Gaming 2G graphics card in for review.

An update from MSI:

GTX 960 GAMING update: updated Gaming App

To improve an already great card even further, we are introducing an updated version of the Gaming App (v4.0.0.02), which pushes the clock speeds of the GTX 960 GAMING cards up higher for end-users to provide even better performance. End-users can apply these updated clock speeds on their GTX 960 GAMING cards by downloading and using the newest version of the MSI Gaming App. (v4.0.0.02) @ http://download.msi.com/uti_exe/gamingApp.zip. Please note that only the GTX 960 GAMING 2G and GTX 960 GAMING 100ME models will receive higher clock speeds, other GTX 960 cards will remain unchanged.

Revised GTX 960 GAMING clock speeds: