Nvidia has finally released the highly-anticipated GeForce GTX 960

Nvidia released two high-end graphics cards last year, dubbed the GeForce GTX 970 and GeForce GTX 980, both of which were met with universal acclaim due to the insane performance-per-watt level that came from the use of the company’s Maxwell architecture. I actually purchased a GTX 980 myself during the Cyber Monday sales last November, but even with a significant price cut the card still ran me several hundred dollars.

While a $500+ graphics card is fine for a PC gaming enthusiast who has pretty much nothing else to spend their money on (sobs internally), most gamers aren’t going to want to spend that kind of money on a single component, especially when they’ll probably never utilize the card’s full potential. Even Nvidia’s more reasonably priced GTX 970 is still somewhere between $300 and $400. Fortunately, the company has addressed this issue today with the launch of the highly-anticipated GeForce GTX 960, a new Maxwell card that’s geared towards more budget conscious gamers.

The new card offers the kind of solid but not amazing level of performance that you’d expect from a mid-tier graphics card and, thanks to the Maxwell architecture, runs on a ridiculously low level of power and is completely silent. Pair all of this with its $200 price tag and you have quite an impressive graphics card, but how well does it fair against its predecessor? According to PC Gamer, while the card certainly does outperform the GeForce GTX 760, it doesn’t do so by a very impressive amount.

PC Gamer’s Dave James gave the card an 82 out of 100, saying:

“I can’t help but feel underwhelmed, though, which is surprising given how excited I’ve been about the previous Maxwell-based cards. That’s even despite the fact I’ve got one of the most overclocked versions of the GTX 960 sat in my test rig: the EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC. After witnessing the excellent GeForce GTX 970 far outstripping its predecessor, the GeForceGTX 770, the GTX 960’s GPU feels like it’s been designed to only put in the bare minimum of effort.”

While the GTX 960’s reviews aren’t as universally praising as the reviews for its high-end brothers were, that shouldn’t deter potential buyers. The general consensus seems to be that this card is an excellent purchase for people that’re looking to upgrade their outdated hardware, but if you already have a fairly modern graphics card then you might as well save your money.

Nvidia is actually pushing this card for MOBA players due to the generally low requirements that games like Dota 2 and League of Legends have, which is exactly where the GTX 960 performs best. It’s during these lighter-load gaming sessions that one will be able to fully appreciate how silent the card is, as it can run a game of League of Legends at max settings without even needing to turn on the fans.

If the GTX 960 seems like your kind of graphics card then you may want to be quick about getting your hands on one because if the release of this card is anything like the release of the GTX 970 and GTX 980, it could be out of stock pretty much everywhere for quite some time. It took me weeks to get my hands on my GTX 980 through Amazon unless I was willing to purchase one of the sketchier, lesser known brands.