Conclusion

Performance

Obviously the GTX960 is aimed at 1080p gaming.  If we focus on 1080p it was really able to max out 6/9 games acceptably.  The remaining three would need a few settings turned down to be acceptably playable.

At 4K of course the card really struggles and can only really play the easiest of our games.

2GB of memory is really about perfect for this card for today’s games at 1080p.  The 4GB version would help at higher resolutions for the card not to lag due to VRAM – but whenever this is the case the card no longer has enough compute power left to give a good enough experience anyway.  The reason to choose a 4GB 960 is to be future proof or to get better scores on benchmarks or if you are going to run SLI so that you can run higher resolutions at good frame rates.  The 4GB version also isn’t that much more if you want to stretch for it.

So is this the best choice you can make with your wallet?  The GTX 970 gives a lot more performance, but it also costs a good bit more.  Our 960 SSC costs $210, but the 970 SSC costs $350 which is 66% more.  Meanwhile the new GTX950 is only a few bucks less but won’t be as fast.  This is clearly priced well in terms of bang for the buck for Nvidia.  However that comparison is just for Nvidia.  The real competition here is from AMD.  In our benchmarks we’ve also compared the R9-280X.  The 280X can be had at newegg for as low as $225 right now.  The 280x also delivered 25% more average FPS than the GTX960 did over all the games.  So if you’re willing to leave team green there are alternatives – albeit without this low power efficiency and the quietness that brings and also without all the display port outputs.

The performance numbers weren’t at the playable level for 3840×2160, but no single GPU card can play all those games at the UHD resolution with perfectly playable FPS anyways.  Plus if you can afford a 4K monitor the chances are that you’re also looking to spend more on your GPU!

Summary

If this were a review of a reference GTX 960 we would give it a silver award simply because the 280X provides more performance per dollar.  However we are reviewing this GPU as a special version of the 960.  In terms of what EVGA have done with the 960 for the money then it’s really really good.  The GTX 960 SSC manages to be a complete silent and sleek solution simultaneously. It performs very well at 1080p and it’s not overly flashy or colorful. The high power limits enabled a great overclock while the silence of the ACX2.0+ cooler was truly impressive.  While it can’t keep up with AMD’s similarly priced R9-280X it brings other benefits to the table including improved noise, heat and a better selection of output ports.

We’d like to thank EVGA for sending us the GeForce GTX 960 SSC ACX 2.0+. They managed to take the already good reference design GTX 960 to the next level for a very small premium.