Two out of three have the signature Phantom cooler

Jan 24, 2015 09:24 GMT  ·  By

The GeForce GTX 960 was not about to be overlooked by Gainward, especially when this OEM has a certain cooler that carries fame in some circles. The OEM calls those graphics card the “Phantom” series.

As one probably expects, one of the video boards sticks to the reference design guidelines and cooling, though only loosely.

As opposed to other NVIDIA partners who only put their stickers on the things, Gainward replaced the entire cooler shroud on the stock GTX 960. It also tweaked the clocks a bit.

Nevertheless, it is the Gainward GTX 960 Phantom and the Phantom Golden Sample GLH that deserve most of the attention. GLH stands for “Goes Like Hell” in case you were wondering.

Gainward GeForce Series main assets

High-quality components are one, consisting of solid capacitors super low RdsON MOSFET, and high-quality Ferrite core chokes. They enable long lifespan, lower power loss and less heat, leading to an overall higher reliability.

The use of Phantom coolers with removable fan design is the second advantage, though the stock board is exempt from it, naturally.

This cooler allows each fan body to be removed and cleaned, and you can even control the rotation speed with the EXPERTool utility, changing the fan curve.

You should have “twice the performance of previous-generation cards” thanks to Maxwell architecture and the new NVIDIA technologies, according to the OEM. In truth, the real-life performance won't really be higher than 45-50% over GTX 660, and maybe 10-15% over GTX 760, but it's still considerable.

Especially when you add to your reasoning the advantage in energy efficiency as well, of 33% over Kepler GPU architecture.

The graphics cards can even run without starting the fans unless you launch a game like Batman: Arkham City or Dragon Age: Inquisition. Even MOBA games won't pull the power draw to over 31W (normal consumption during web browsing and such is 21W).

The performance numbers

The stock GTX 960 works at 1,165 / 1,228 MHz Base / Boost while the GDDR5 is clocked at 7 GHz. The Phantom is a 1,203 MHz / 1,266 MHz with 2 GB at 7.2 GHz. Finally, the GTX 960 Phantom GLH operates at 1,279 MHz / 1,342 MHz and has 2 GB of 7.2 GHz VRAM.

The max TDP still doesn't go above 120W though, so no more than one 6-pin power port is needed. For comparison, the regular GTX 960 works at 1,127 MHz / 1,178 MHz and 7 GHz memory.

The Gainward GeForce GTX 960 video boards should be up for sale at $200 / €200 or above with two DVI ports, one DisplayPort and one HDMI.

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Gainward GeForce GTX 960 (4 Images)

Gainward GeForce GTX 960 Phantom GLH
Gainward GeForce GTX 960Gainward GeForce GTX 960 Phantom
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