By simply cutting their larger Maxwell core in half, their memory bus in half, and calling it good enough NVIDIA really don’t seem to like their 960 series all that much. It is almost as if the 960 was an afterthought, meant to simply fill a perceived gap in their lineup. Simply put, they still cost too much to be considered optimal for HTPCs and occasional video gaming consumers, and yet don’t have the performance that more PC gaming orientated consumers crave. Worse still they really need to be SLI’ed before their value becomes readily apparent to most consumers. Compare and contrast this with AMDs method and it comes as no surprise that many consumers on a tight budget look to team red instead of team green to satisfy their $200 video card requirements.
A highly factory overclocked 960 on the other hand is a horse of a different color. As we saw throughout testing by ‘simply’ turning the performance dial to ’11’ the lean and somewhat mean GM206 ‘Maxwell 2.0’ core becomes a surprisingly good performer. While yes the PNY 960 Elite OC is still memory starved with its itty-bitty 128-bit bus, it easily beats a stock AMD R9 280X and even comes close to matching what a highly overclocked R9 280X can do. Add in the fact that it can do this while offering less heat, less noise, less power consumption, a lifetime warranty, and costs less than an overlocked R9 280X, and the Elite OC’s value becomes rather obvious. Don’t get us wrong we still prefer higher performance cards for 1440P resolution, but at 1080P resolutions this 960 is an amazing value.
To be fair hand waving away one of the largest factory overclocks you will find on a 960 anywhere does not do this card justice. Nor does it do PNY’s engineers justice. To be clear this 960 is extremely overclocked and this takes a lot of time and effort to produce such a ‘golden’ line. PNY are obviously highly binning their GM206 cores they purchase from NVIDIA and are only use the best of the best for this ‘Elite OC’ series. The extra factory testing alone means getting a ‘dud’ is unlikely. When you add in the fact that it comes with a much better heatsink and fan solution, yet only costs about $20 more than what a reference GTX 960 will set you back, the end results are bordering on amazing.
Yes that twenty dollars represents a ~10% increase in price but it still is only twenty bucks more than a stock GeForce GTX 960 commands. No matter how you look at it, that is one hell of a bargain. It is such a good bargain that at some point in the near future we will have to seriously look at SLI GeForce GTX 960 performance numbers. If what holds true for one holds true for two, then for builds where a reference GeForce GTX 980 is called for we would be strongly inclined towards saving nearly a hundred dollars and getting two of these bad boys instead. The performance, the warranty, and the value would be just too tempting to pass up.
In the meantime, no matter if you are inclined more towards team red instead of team green, what PNY have created with their Elite OC 960 deserves your respect. Once again they have done what NVIDIA should have done in the first place, and in the process of ‘correcting’ most of the inherent issues of reference GeForce GTX 960 video cards they have done an enormous service to all consumers. After all, with such pressure now bearing on AMD, who are usually the value king, it is only a matter of time before factory overclocked R9 280X’s prices start to fall. This in turn means all consumers – red or green – will start to get even better value for their hard earned dollars.
