14 DAY TRIAL // Some rumors have been confirmed about the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 and the GM206 chip it's based on, while others have been debunked. At least according to another rumor, so we should still take things with a grain or two of salt.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2GB 128-bit is rapidly approaching its launch date according to certain interested parties.
It makes us wonder why NVIDIA didn't make a formal announcement of any sort at CES 2015. Maybe it wanted the Tegra X1 to have all the attention at the Consumer Electronics Show?
Whatever the case, we now have a close-up picture of the GM206 chip powering the GeForce GTX 960, as well as some data on the graphics card itself.
The NVIDIA GM206 Maxwell
The chip in the GTX 960 is more precisely called the GM206-300 iteration and may or may not be the full chip.
The processor should have between 8 and 10 SMMs as previously assumed, suggesting 1,024 to 1,280 CUDA cores.
The chip is rectangular rather than square and has a memory interface of 128 bits, according to the few listings of the GTX 960 in stores. Premature listings, all of them, not accompanied by any photo of the board, official or otherwise.
The GeForce GTX 960
The card will have the GPU backed by 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, but unfortunately that's all we know about it. Or at least about the reference model.
OEM-customized versions are already on the way, and we've already covered three from Micro-Star International, such as they were.
ASUS is apparently preparing some too, a pair of them, one with a DirectCU 2 cooler and one under the STRIX brand.
Galaxy offers a ray of sunshine though. Or rather Galax. The GF GTX 960-2GD5 is said to have GPU/VRAM clocks of 1178 / 7010 MHz, while the GTX 960-2GD5 OC supposedly works at 1228 / 7010 MHz.
That implies that the reference GPU operates at 1,178 MHz and the RAM at 7 GHz, but we're still on the fence about it.
Availability and pricing
The price is unknown, but some retailers say that the NDA for the GTX 960 lifts on January 15, so maybe there isn't much time left to wait after all. Well, the listings go from $415 / €350 to over $500 / €421, but we know better than to take those sums at face value.