Cooling, Noise, and Power

For the most part the performance difference between the GTX 960’s is small. Because of that our Cooling, Noise, and Power section is especially important. Here we can really see the differences between similar cards, specifically with how well the aftermarket cooling works on each of them. So I ran the Gigabyte GTX 960 through the same three tests that the other GTX 960’s went through. To start things off let’s take a look at the cards power consumption. Not surprisingly all three of the 960’s are right next to each other. The gigabyte however is pulling a substantial amount more than the other two though. I guess this explains the need for the two power connections. It also explains why the Gigabyte card was pulling ahead slightly in a good portion of our tests.

For the cooling design, all three cards are running similarly sized fans, the Gigabyte also includes a similar feature to what Asus and later MSI have added to their cards where at idle and low load the fans turn off. At full load, the Gigabyte came in just barely under the Asus for noise but the MSI was still a few decibels quieter.

When running in game under load the Gigabyte however was the warmest of the three cards at 63 degrees. That is still a respectable number, but I would have liked to of seen it closer to the others.