Gadgetory

how's it going guys so I am finally doing my first proper review of the GTX 960 and the one I have here with me today happens to be from my friends at ZOTAC now ZOTAC has two different flavors of GTX 960 this one here being the more modest option with a slight factory overclock which you can find for $1.99 and for 10 bucks more you can get their amp Edition on which they push the core clock even further added a beefed up cooler and a pretty nice looking backplate pauls hardware does a great review of the amp Edition so in case you haven't already seen it I'll put a link in the description here's a quick side-by-side comparison between the two cards and please forgive that I'm using the Newegg website I was going to have this one kid I know make a custom slide for me but he died in a depressing nationwide commercial now we'll go to into detail here because I'm sure by now the GTX 960 specs have all been etched into your minds but I did want to quickly remind that the GTX 960 does come with the whole family of Nvidia technologies like dynamic super resolution and gsync and shield support the card also supports up to 4 monitors with a smart offering of video outputs including three DisplayPort 1.2 s1 HDMI 2.0 and dual link DVI the cooler itself uses a gray metallic construction for its semi-open shroud and has some stylish plated accents with very tasteful vendor branding on the front akin to other gtx 960 s available the fans on this card remain idle until the GPU reaches a certain load and even during wider scenes while I was gaming the fans held their bear when they eventually did spin up during a firefight I really couldn't hear them at all through my define R 5 despite having removed some of the sound dampening panels up top all things considered it's no surprise that ZOTAC sound testing for this card was conducted with a long year jerboa the GPU idles nicely at 38 degrees Celsius which is impressive considering that's achieved with zero rpm passive cooling with the fans active temps didn't go above 71 degrees Celsius when gaming which is really nice to see now apart from minimal heat output the card single 6-pin pci ii connector and 120 watt TDP makes it a great low impact option for something like an HTTP C I know that personally when I was planning out my home theater PC I wanted to make it as small as possible and that meant using an SFX power supply that didn't quite have enough watts to drive a very demanding card so I would think considering what's available today the 960 might be a good solution for those of you looking for a similar setup it also helps that the cards only 8 inches long which makes it friendly to many small form-factor cases as for the rest of the cooler you do get a slim heat sink permeating by 2 6 millimeter copper heat pipes yeah it seems pretty basic but based on the temps I was getting this configuration works beautifully as an aesthetic choice though I would have liked to see nickel-plated heat pipes to cover up the copper color it's just that it kind of looks how do I put this politely ugly you do get a nice black PCB however with an sli finger for up to 2 Way SLI and if you want to see some SLI benchmarks of the GTX 960 as well as the single GP results for this card I've already posted them in my 960 SLI versus 970 video so you can check the performance out there what you'll find there is that the GTX 960 is undeniably tailored for 1080 gaming the 128 bit memory interface as well as the other memory specs confirm this and while the 960 has fallen short of our expectations in some ways it does seem to check all the boxes for 1080 gamers in need of a power efficient card at the most affordable price point as forzó techs take on the GTX 960 I honestly think it's one of the more sensible designs for the car that I've seen a lot of other 960s have bat longer coolers on them but I don't really think that's necessary for such a low power card that probably shines best in something like nht PC or even a small steam box there's also been a lot of talk that these specs and performance of the GTX 960 feels more akin to a 950 Ti so when I see a 10-inch 960 sporting a big aggressive cooler it feels like it's trying to be something it's not and I definitely don't get that impression with this card from ZOTAC achievement unlocked for self-awareness not to mention a fancier cooler generally warrants a few extra bucks from your wallet but I don't know what do you guys think is the gtx 960 what you expected and what kind of system could you see yourself using it for