NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q 6 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Specifications
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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

1789 points

26% slightly better overall score

1419 points

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

37 FPS

7 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

29 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

30 FPS

8 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

22 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

25 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

20 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

23 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher Clouds frame rate

18 FPS

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

3292 points

43% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

2293 points

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

347.28 points

107% significantly higher Blender score

167.72 points

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

28312 points

59% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

17784 points

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29934 points

42% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

21072 points

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

32085 points

43% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

22380 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

32446 points

63% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

19796 points

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

29492 points

41% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

20845 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1480 MHz

31% slightly higher core clock speed

1127 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1480 MHz

25% slightly higher boost clock speed

1178 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

6 GiB

49% significantly more memory

4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

192 Bit

49% significantly larger memory bus width

128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

192.2 GB/s

71% significantly higher memory bandwidth

112.2 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

80 W

49% significantly lower TDP

120 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

71.04 Gigapixels/s

88% significantly higher pixel rate

37.7 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

118.4 Gigatexels/s

57% significantly higher texture rate

75.39 Gigatexels/s

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.79 TFLOPS

57% significantly better floating point performance

2.41 TFLOPS

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1280

25% slightly more shading units

1024

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

25% slightly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

49% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

223rd of 595

242nd of 595

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2017 June

2015 January

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.1

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs GeForce GTX 960 comparison

For gaming, the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics card is better than the GeForce GTX 960 in our tests.

The GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q has a slightly higher core clock speed. This is the frequency at which the graphics core is running at. While not necessarily an indicator of overall performance, this metric can be useful when comparing two GPUs based on the same architecture. In addition, the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q also has a slightly higher boost clock speed. This is a frequency that can be reached if the GPU is cooled sufficiently and has enough power.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q has significantly more memory with 6 GiB of memory compared to 4 GiB. Lots of memory is good when playing at high resolutions or with many monitors.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q has a significantly lower TDP at 80 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 960 at 120 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q over the GeForce GTX 960.