MSI GTX 960 4GB? (GPU Opinions)

been looking for a new GPU and been searching since the beginning of this year.

I have been leaning towards a MSI GTX 960 4GB it has great reviews, good specs and it should be powerful enough for me any thoughts?

I play BNG, Fallout 4, GTAV, Rigs of rods, and a few other misc games/sims and would like to have 60+ FPS on at least "High" setting.

Computer Specs
27 Inch HP 1080P Monitor
I7-3770K
Windows 10
470W PSU (Might need upgrading depending on chosen card)
12 GB RAM
and a crap AMD 7570 2GB GPU

The tower is a pre built HPE-1455 from 2012 so it is a bit "dated".

Any opinions on GPU'S in that price range or cheaper?

Thanks in advance.

 

i have the EVGA gtx 960 SSC 4gb in my pc and i get 60-70 fps on gta5 on ultra. beamng drive on grid map (not blank) sits around 140fps on ultra. fallout 4 on ultra goes anywere from 30fps in downtown bostin were a fps drop happens for everyone to well above 80fps

 

My only thought is that 4GB of vram on a card in this class is flushing money. You might not get a choice about it, in which case it's fine, but if it's the difference between a 2GB 'premium' 960 (either quieter, faster, or both) and a 4GB 'regular' 960, I'd go with the 2GB card in a heartbeat.

In a $200-class card firmly targeted at the 1080p market I just don't see needing that much vRAM. I could be wrong about it and would be happy to look over any benchmarks showing that. Above 1080p I don't see this card as a serious contender - and as far as I know, that's where you have to go to see the 2GB make an impact. This review on Guru3D has 3 pages of graphs specifically concerning frametimes and such things which one might expect to suffer with the limited vRAM - note that the only problems they scared up were above 1080p.

 

2GB is barely enough for 1080p gaming now, in a few years it will be a bottleneck. Unless you plan to swap out the card in two years' time, or play on lower settings because you don't have enough VRAM, go for at least 3GB.

OT: It's a good card. I'd tell you to spend a bit more and go for an R9 380X instead, but you'd have to buy a new PSU as well and it would be much more expensive. MSI's TFV cooler is great, I have a 970 4G and it runs really quiet and below 55C when gaming. You could expect 60-70C in an OEM case though.

 

It's easy to say that of course, but vRAM has been an easy upsell for years. So far I've rarely seen an official card from nVidia or AMD/ATI which is actually underspecced on vRAM. I feel like the link I provided supports my position fairly well, although I'd much rather have linked to a test showing the results at 1080p (rather than at 1440p). 1440p is about 70% more pixels with a correspondingly higher vRAM usage. Out of 3 games tested in the link we see that only 1 game is actually affected (again, at a 70% higher resolution than our target). Add to all that the fact that we're sitting on a pretty new/fresh console generation - this is something that typically reins in gaming resource usage for years. I don't expect to see 1080p vRAM usage going up steeply soon.

My standard advice is not to "purchase for the future" when on a budget - purchase for the present or very close future (eg games on souped-up versions of current engines). IMO It's hard to make accurate predictions about GPU requirements a few years out... and on a budget it's generally safe to say that no matter what you buy you'll be turning settings down in a year or two.

Generally I apply that advice to situations where someone is looking at spending an extra 20-40% on a budget card though. In that case the extra money is best set aside and applied towards the next budget card purchase in a couple of years. At the moment it seems that a 4GB card might cost only 15% more than a 2GB card though... without conclusive evidence that you're wrong or I'm right I'd say that such a slim difference ($20) throws my whole concept out the window.

Get the 4GB card and be happy! :-D

 

I only can say that. Everybody is laughting about the 960. But. I do have myself a GTX 960 from MSI. It´s great. I can play so many games now with 60 FPS. I can only say " Good quality" !

So If you want to buy one. Do it !

 

I hope I didn't sound that way? It looks like a perfectly fine and capable card.

I probably harped on 'budget' incorrectly - really what I said above is what I apply to all aspects of PC buying. If (a) you don't need it now, (b) you don't know for sure that you'll need it in 2 years, and (c) it costs 30% more than what you know you need... set the money aside for the next upgrade. That keeps you on a fresher equipment cycle all the time... or it saves you the money if you end up not upgrading in 2yr.

 

I have a 960, had it for nearly 12 months, it works on a 400w psu, so don't worry about your current one for now. The 960 is the sweet spot. No. It will not play every game on ultra settings, 60fps with no drops, but it can totally play most of them.

Beamng runs like a dream with the 960.
GTA 5 is flawless (besides MSAA, that's really taxing!)
Fallout 4 will run with a mixture of med, high and ultra, but that game looks like poo anyways so I don't see a difference other than the fps counter going up

Its great bang for the buck material!

 

if you have money to spare up to the 970, it will future proof the system, i have the asus gtx960 and its meh, runs beamng at 60fps normal no dynamic reflections runs just cause 2 full settings at 60 sometimes dips to 30. the 4gb doesnt make any difference really, go for a 2gb 960 or a 970, or even a used 970.

 

I have this coming in from newegg and amazon.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814126047

Asus AMD 380X

• 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5
• Core Clock 1030 MHz (1050 MHz in OC mode)
• 2048 Stream Processors
• Effective Memory Clock 5700 MHz
• Memory Interface 256-Bit
• Memory Type GDDR5 and Corsair CS Series 550 Watt PSU CS550M

This combo is a huge update/upgrade from this current stuff I have now. This card came out a few days ago, its supposed to be a card designed to fill the gap between the GTX 960 and 970 cards in the $250 and below price range, can't wait to get it installed and give some feedback.

Should be here in a few days aiming towards Saturday if not Monday.

 

Hmm, that actually benches a lot more impressively than I thought it would (just like the rest of this generation of AMD graphics products).

 

If I were deciding between this an a 380, I would totally go for the 380.

 

I don't understand why you would do that DavidTheTechGeek... the 380X is clearly superior, especially for minimum frame rates. http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1591?vs=1592

 

This is why I choose the 380X instead of the 380, why purchase the "older" less performing product when you can go for the more improved "newer" faster product for not that much more?

 

So I got the ASUS AMD 380X OC card installed and played around with a for a little, runs very smooth and also very cool and last but not least the card is very quiet.

Loaded up ASUS GPU tweak II and placed the card in its "overclocked" option.

Loaded up GTAV and put every graphic option to the highest available setting (including every misc graphic option post FX etc etc) (1920x1080) and then ran the built in benchmarker.

60-65 FPS I was impressed for the price this sub $250 USD card can do some work, I am going to use it alittle more and give some more feed back as time progress.