NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 is a high-end desktop graphics card based on the second generation Maxwell architecture. The GM204 chip is manufactured in 28 nm at TSMC. Compared to the older GeForce GTX 780Ti, the 980 offers similar performance levels but at reduced average power consumption. The similarly named Nvidia Geforce GTX 980M for notebooks is based on the same chip, but uses less shader cores and slower clock speeds for reduced performance. Since end of 2015, the GTX 980 is also used in laptops (same chip with same clocks and branding).

The Geforce GTX 980 supports a range of unique features like CUDA, 3D Vision, PhysX, GeForce Experience, GameStream, GPU Boost 3.0, Adaptive Vertical-Sync / G-Sync, SLI, DSR, MFAA and Virtual Reality latency improvements.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 is a mid-range graphics card for desktop PCs. It is based on the 28nm Maxwell GM206 chip and offers 768 shaders, 48 TMUs and 32 ROPs. The graphics memory is typically 2 GB GDDR5 with 6.6 GHz effective and a 128-bit interface.

As a novelty compared to the previous Maxwell GM204 chip, the GM206 includes the new VP7 video engine with HVEC (H.265) decoding and encoding. Furthermore, the GTX 950 supports HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 for 4K video output.

The 3D gaming performance of the GTX 950 is slightly better than the GeForce GTX 965M (33% more shaders but slower clock speed).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 is a desktop graphics card of the upper middle class. It is based on the GM206 Maxwell chip that is produced in 28nm. The GTX960 offers 1024 shader cores, 64 TMUs and 32 ROPs (no deactivated units of the chip). The graphics memory is usually 2 or 4 GB GDDR5 (7 GHz effective clock) connected with a 128 Bit interface. 

On average the gaming performance is on a level with the AMD Radeon R9 280 and R9 285. Compared to laptop graphics cards, the 960 is slightly faster than a mobile Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M. The 970M offers more shader cores, but at a lower clock speed. The similar named GeForce GTX 960M for notebooks offers only 640 shader cores and a slightly lower core clock. The performance of the GTX 960 should be suffice for most games in full HD resolution. In our benchmarks only GTA 5 and The Witcher 3 achieved below 30 fps on average (see below for detailed benchmarks).

The GM206 supports CUDA, 3D Vision, PhysX, GeForce Experience, Surround, GameStream, GPU Boost 2.0, Adaptive Vertical Sync / G-SYNC, SLI, DSR, MFAA and Virtual Reality latency improvements. The GTX 960 also includes a H.265 capable de- and encoder as a first.

The power consumption of the GTX 960 on the desktop without load is around 10 Watt and on a similar level to the AMD counterparts. During gaming the 960 reaches around 85-100 Watt (depending on the model) which is a lot less than e.g. the Radeon R9 285 (around 170 Watt) - source tomshardware.com