Should I Upgrade My GeForce GTX 460 to a GeForce GTX 960 Video Card?
Test System
Before we look at the numbers, let’s take a brief look at the test system that was used. All testing was done using a fresh install of Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit and benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running. There has been some concern of people testing a cold card versus a hot card, but we’ve always done our testing ‘hot’ since the site started back more than a decade ago. Video Cards & Drivers used for testing:
- AMD CATALYST Omega (14.12)
- NVIDIA GeForce 347.25
Intel X79/LGA2011 Platform
The Intel X79 platform that we used to test the all of the video cards was running the ASUS P9X79-E WS motherboard with BIOS 1501 that came out on 01/15/2014. We went with the Intel Core i7-4960X Ivy Bridge-E processor to power this platform as it is PCIe 3.0 certified, so all graphics cards are tested with PCI Express Gen 3 enabled. The Kingston HyperX 10th Anniversary 16GB 2400MHz quad channel memory kit was set to XMP Profile #2. This profile defaults to 2133MHz with 1.65v and 11-12-12-30 1T memory timings. The OCZ Vertex 460 240GB SSD was run with latest firmware available. A Corsair AX860i digital power supply provides clean power to the system and is also silent as the fan hardly ever spins up. This is critical to our testing as it lowers the ambient noise level of the room and gives us more accurate sound measurements than the old Corsair AX1200 power supply that we used from 2012 till this year had a loud fan that always ran. 
Here are the exact hardware components that we are using on our test system:
| The Intel X79 Test Platform | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Component |
Brand/Model |
Live Pricing |
|||
| Processor | Intel Core i7-4960X | ||||
| Motherboard |
ASUS P9X79-E WS
|
||||
| Memory |
16GB Kingston 2133MHz
|
||||
| Video Card | Various | ||||
| Solid-State Drive | OCZ Vertex 460 240GB | ||||
| Cooling | Intel TS13X (Asetek) | ||||
| Power Supply | Corsair AX860i | ||||
| Operating System | Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit | ||||
| Monitor | Sharp PN-K321 32″ 4K | ||||
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB Card GPU-Z Info: 
ASUS STRIX GTX 960 DirectCU II OC 2GB Card GPU-Z Info: 
