NVIDIA’s GTX 960 is a budget friendly dream card for overclockers

NVIDIA has described the GTX 960 as a more budget friendly version of the enthusiast grade powerhouses that it released last year, the GTX 970 and the GTX 980. While the GTX 960 isn’t nearly as powerful as its big brothers, NVIDIA claims that the card is still perfect for hardcore gamers and hardware enthusiasts. According to some recent overclocking tests, NVIDIA is telling telling the truth.  

We loved the GTX 960 when we reviewed it several weeks past. Nvidia’s mid-range card proved affordable, quiet and quick enough for essentially any title at 1080p resolution. The company hinted that its budget wonder could be over-clocked for even better performance, but testing such claims is an issue; a sample size of one isn’t particularly useful. That didn’t deter PC Perspective, however. The site decided to round up 13 GTX 960 cards from three manufacturers to take a closer look at just how far the card can be pushed, and it turns out Nvidia wasn’t lying. The best card hit a maximum stable maximum Boost clock of 1,576MHz, a 33 percent improvement over the base clock of 1,178 MHz. Even the slowest card managed to climb above 1,500MHz, and the median over-clock came in at 1,542MHz.