Notebookcheck

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M is an upper mid-range, DirectX 11-compatible graphics card for laptops unveiled in March 2015. It is based on Nvidia's Maxwell architecture (GM107 chip) and manufactured in 28 nm. The GTX 960M offers 640 shader units clocked at 1097 - 1202 MHz (Boost) as well as fast GDDR5 memory (128 bit, 5000 MHz effective, 80 GB/s).

Compared to the previous and technically very similar GTX 860M, the GTX 960M is clocked slightly higher.

Architecture

Compared to Kepler, Maxwell has been optimized in several details to increase power efficiency. Smaller Streaming Multiprocessors (SMM) with only 128 ALUs (Kepler: 192) and an optimized scheduler should lead to better utilization of the shaders. Nvidia promises that a Maxwell SMM with 128 ALUs can offer 90 percent of the performance of a Kepler SMX with 192 ALUs. GM107 features 5 SMMs and thus 640 shader cores, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs (128-bit interface).

Another optimization is the massively enlarged L2 cache (GM107: 2 MB). The increased size can handle some of the memory traffic to allow for a relatively narrow memory interface without significantly reducing the performance.

GM107 supports DirectX 12 with feature level 11_0 only.

Performance

Although the GTX 960M has the same memory bandwidth as the previous GTX 860M, its higher core clock leads to a slightly better performance. Overall, the 960M is almost 10 percent faster and similar to the desktop GTX 750 Ti.

Many games of 2014/2015 can be played fluently in FullHD resolution and high detail settings. However, very demanding games such as Assassin's Creed Unity will require lower resolutions and/or details.

Features

GM107 integrates the sixth generation of the PureVideo HD video engine (VP6), offering a better decoding performance for H.264 and MPEG-2 videos. Of course, VP6 supports all features of previous generations (4K support, PIP, video encoding via NVENC API). Unfortunately, HDMI 2.0 is still not supported.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 960M should be similar to the old GTX 860M (about 60 watts). Therefore, the GPU is best suited for 15-inch laptops or larger. The 900M series also supports Optimus to automatically switch between an integrated graphics card and the Nvidia GPU.

ManufacturerNVIDIA
GeForce GTX 900M Series
GeForce GTX 980M SLI 3072 @ 1038 - 1127 (Boost) MHz2x 256 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 970M SLI 2560 @ 924 - 1038 (Boost) MHz2x 192 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 965M SLI 2048 @ 924 - 950 (Boost) MHz2x 128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 980M 1536 @ 1038 - 1127 (Boost) MHz256 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 970M 1280 @ 924 - 1038 (Boost) MHz192 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 965M 1024 @ 924 / 935 - 950 / 1151 (Boost) MHz128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 960M 640 @ 1029 - 1097 (Boost) MHz128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 950M 640 @ 914 - 993 - 1124 (Boost) MHz128 Bit @ 1800 - 5000 MHz
CodenameN16P-GX
ArchitectureMaxwell
Pipelines640 - unified
Core Speed *1029 - 1097 (Boost) MHz
Memory Speed *5000 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory4096 MB
Shared Memoryno
DirectXDirectX 12 (FL 11_0), Shader 5.0
Transistors1870 Million
technology28 nm
FeaturesBattery Boost, GameStream, ShadowPlay, GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, PhysX, CUDA, SLI, GeForce Experience, GameWorks, Adaptive VSync, DSR, Ansel
Notebook Sizemedium sized
Date of Announcement12.03.2015
Link to Manufacturer Pagehttp://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook...
* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15
Ref. Match 64Bit +
OpenGL 64Bit +
3DMark - Time Spy Graphics 2560x1440
0%
100%
min: 1138     avg: 1148 (9%)     median: 1148 (9%)     max: 1158 Points
+ 2 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Time Spy Score 2560x1440
0%
100%
min: 1198     avg: 1202 (12%)     median: 1202 (12%)     max: 1206 Points
+ 2 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Fire Strike Graphics 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 3906     avg: 4293.7 (11%)     median: 4316 (11%)     max: 4705 Points
+ 54 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Fire Strike Score 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 2990     avg: 3924.8 (17%)     median: 3981 (17%)     max: 4340 Points
+ 56 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Graphics 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 21403     avg: 29219.9 (18%)     median: 30085.5 (18%)     max: 33474 Points
+ 54 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Score 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 4513     avg: 15112.8 (31%)     median: 16283 (33%)     max: 19618 Points
+ 56 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score 1280x720 offscreen
0%
100%
min: 191856     avg: 224199 (49%)     median: 226308 (50%)     max: 251562 Points
+ 16 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Extreme Graphics 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 27912     avg: 90551.1 (24%)     median: 106594 (28%)     max: 131124 Points
+ 17 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Standard Graphics 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 28134     avg: 100084 (13%)     median: 112891 (15%)     max: 200269 Points
+ 49 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
Unigine Heaven 3.0 - DX 11, Normal Tessellation, High Shaders 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 56     avg: 56.2 (21%)     median: 56.2 (21%)     max: 56.3 fps
+ 2 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
ComputeMark v2.1 - Normal, Score 1024x600
0%
100%
min: 3139     avg: 3320.9 (15%)     median: 3337 (15%)     max: 3503 Points
+ 14 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
LuxMark v2.0 64Bit - Room GPUs-only
0%
100%
min: 667     avg: 835.6 (16%)     median: 879 (17%)     max: 991 Samples/s
+ 9 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
LuxMark v2.0 64Bit - Sala GPUs-only
0%
100%
min: 1097     avg: 1310.8 (13%)     median: 1254 (12%)     max: 1532 Samples/s
+ 11 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 11 - Performance GPU 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 4826     avg: 5276.6 (10%)     median: 5278 (10%)     max: 5901 points
+ 54 benchmarks and specifications   - Hide comparison chart
3DMark 11 - Performance 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 3527     avg: 5444.3 (19%)     median: 5535.5 (19%)     max: 6161 points
+ 54 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 06 Standard 1280x1024 +
Unigine Heaven 2.1 - high, Tesselation (normal), DirectX11 1280x1024
0%
100%
min: 68.7     avg: 68.7 (31%)     median: 68.7 (31%)     max: 68.7 fps
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
SPECviewperf 12
Solidworks (sw-03) 1900x1060 +
Siemens NX (snx-02) 1900x1060 +
Showcase (showcase-01) 1900x1060 +
Medical (medical-01) 1900x1060 +
Maya (maya-04) 1900x1060 +
Energy (energy-01) 1900x1060 +
Creo (creo-01) 1900x1060 +
Catia (catia-04) 1900x1060 +
SPECviewperf 11
Siemens NX 1920x1080 +
Tcvis 1920x1080 +
SolidWorks 1920x1080 +
Pro/ENGINEER 1920x1080 +
Maya 1920x1080 +
Lightwave 1920x1080 +
Ensight 1920x1080 +
Catia 1920x1080 +