Gainward Phantom GLH GeForce GTX 960 2GB Review

Introduction The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 has been out for just over a week and has given us amazing performance capabilities given its such a small power requirement and it has impressed us here at eTeknix with the ability to run passively; could this mid-range graphics card set the pace for future sub $200 cards? Even though it's not very powerful, the GTX 960 series has proven that high resolutions are almost possible at this price point. Today we have the Gainward Phantom GLH (Goes Like Hell) Edition GeForce GTX 960 2GB; a bit of a mouthful if I must say so myself. Gainward aren't renowned for breaking overclocking world records, but they know a thing or two about producing high quality, super quiet cooling solutions with a quirky difference. Gainward has worked their magic by cherry picking specific cards that can handle and maintain their intense factory overclocks. NVIDIA has aimed this card at the core gaming market, hoping for those who admitted to using older technology during Steams survey will want to upgrade to the new Maxwell architecture thanks to its low price. This particular Gainward Phantom is perched at around $21o. For a card that promises epic performance through cherry picked components, lets see if its worth the extra 5% premium. Gainward follows the same style of packaging as others in the NVIDIA range; plain and simple box with a key image of the graphics card. Along the bottom, we see the Phantom logo with its slogan. The only difference with this box is the Goes Like Hell (GLH) logo in the top right. Inside the box, we have bundled a twin molex to 6-pin PCIe power connection, VGA to DVI adapter and Gainwards driver install and quick start guide. Gainward keeps things plain and simple, utilising their own PCB to be able to sit nicely under the Phantom cooler. This cooling solution is one of the most unusual on the market, hiding its twin 92mm PWM fans inside the cooling shroud with the rather slim radiator sitting on top. This particular Phantom cooler is the newest variant in the series and has a cool party trick. That's right, the Phantom cooler has the ability to remove the fans. This feature gives you the ability to clean the fans after a period of time, but you could also choose to run completely passively, albeit running the risk of extremely high temperatures unless you have very good airflow in your case. At the far end of the card, it's in keeping with Gainwards' style, plain, simple and to the point; not even a glimpse of the heat pipes. Along the top of the card, things get a little more interesting, showing you the single 6-pin power connection, ample for the 120w TDP. You also see the two slots which the fans are situated with groves to allows for better air flow. On the back of the card, you have a very typical PCB with rear mounted RAM chips. It's a shame Gainward didn't give the card a backplate; it really would have finished it off well. You can see that the PCB is around 1/5th shorter than the cooling shroud, allowing for improved airflow. Things are kept simple at the outputs end of the card, twin DVI ports, a single DisplayPort and a HDMI port capable of 4k resolution. I wonder if this card, with its intense overclocks; can produce a good 4k score in our tests. Test Systems and Procedures Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system. Test System Motherboard - Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard Processor - Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz RAM - 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz CPU Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Power Supply - BeQuiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive - Crucial M550 512GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Displays - U2868PQU 4K Operating System - Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit Driver Details Hardware Used "Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Games Used Batman Arkham Origins Battlefield 4 Bioshock Infinite Hitman Absolution Metro Last Light Tomb Raider Benchmarks Used 3DMark Unigine Valley Other Software Used Unigine Heaven CPU-ID HWMonitor TechPowerUp GPU-Z Luxmark 3DMark "The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets, to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it's not just for Windows. With 3DMark you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It's the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we've ever created." From Futuremark.com FireStrike is a very demanding benchmark, the GTX 960 stacks up well against its main rival the R9 280, but also shows its predecessor a thing or two with its new Maxwell architecture. Batman: Arkham Origins "Batman: Arkham Origins is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Warner Bros. Games Montréal and released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 video game consoles. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, it follows the 2011 video game Batman: Arkham City and is the third main installment in the Batman: Arkham series. The game, played from a third-person perspective, focuses on Batman's combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets for combat and exploration. Arkham Origins is the first game in the series with multiplayer capability." From Wikipedia. Here we see the GTX 960 holding its own, sat where you would expect, knock for knock with its competitor and also the GTX 760 and GTX 770. This card Produces some spectacular results at the lower resolutions. Battlefield 4 "Battlefield 4 is coming to PC, powered by the advanced technology of DICE’s proprietary Frostbite 3 engine. Blur the line between game and glory in Battlefield 4. With dynamic destructable environments, vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out-war with 64 players, Battlefield 4 on PC will be an unmatched interactive experience. In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad's struggle to find its way home. There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield." From Battlefield.com Here we see the GTX 960 getting a work out, only just producing 62 FPS at 1080p. A respectable figure when you compare it to the GTX Titan, producing only 50% more FPS. Bioshock Infinite "BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter like you’ve never seen. Just ask the judges from E3 2011, where the Irrational Games title won over 85 editorial awards, including the Game Critics Awards’ Best of Show. Set in 1912, players assume the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the flying city of Columbia on a rescue mission. His target? Elizabeth, imprisoned since childhood. During their daring escape, Booker and Elizabeth form a powerful bond -- one that lets Booker augment his own abilities with her world-altering control over the environment. Together, they fight from high-speed Sky-Lines, in the streets and houses of Columbia, on giant zeppelins, and in the clouds, all while learning to harness an expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, and immersing players in a story that is not only steeped in profound thrills and surprises, but also invests its characters with what Game Informer called “An amazing experience from beginning to end." From Bioshockinfinite.com Bioshock gives the pack a hard time, but the GTX 960 is only 3-4 FPS off the GTX 770. Sadly with a new revision, we'd expect the GTX 960 to be performing better than the GTX 770. Hitman Absolution "Hitman: Absolution is the fifth title in the Hitman series by producer, IO Interactive, published by Square Enix and co-published by Eidos. The game was released for thePlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows on November 20, 2012. Hitman: Absolution runs on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier 2 game engine, combining classic Hitman game mechanics with new mechanics." From hitman.wikia.com When you consider that these tests are running at a very high detail levels, you can appreciate how hard this little card has to work, although it's only producing barely playable figures at 1080p. Metro Last Light "Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. The game exists in the universe of the novel, Metro 2033, and its sequels, written by Russian author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, but does not follow any direct storylines from the books. Metro:Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the canonical ending from the novel, ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones.Metro: Last Light features technology which boasts of lighting effects and improved physics claimed to set a new graphical benchmark on the PC and consoles." From Wikipedia.org Metro Last Light proves a hard testing ground for graphics cards, again the only playable figures are at 1080p. However, at 1080p, the GTX 960 beats out the GTX 780. Tomb Raider "On 5 March 2013, Square Enix released Tomb Raider, billed as a reboot of the franchise. In Tomb Raider, the player is confronted with a much younger Lara Croft who is shipwrecked and finds herself stranded on a mysterious island rife with danger, both natural and human. In contrast to the earlier games Croft is portrayed as vulnerable, acting out of necessity, desperation and sheer survival rather than for a greater cause or personal gain." From Wikipedia.org This card is producing some very strong figures at 1080p and 1440p, on par with the R9 280 at 1440p. Not bad considering it's 2GB VRAM down in comparison. Unigine Valley "Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user." From Unigine.com. Once again, the GTX 960 struggles at the higher resolutions, but there's only 10% in it between it and the R9 280 at 1080p and 1440p. Compute Performance LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmark tool. The idea for the program was conceived in 2009 by Jean-Francois ‘Jromang’ Romang. The idea was quite simple, wrap SLG inside an easy to use graphical user interface and use it as a benchmark for OpenCL. From LuxRender.net. I bet you're wondering why I've included the GTX Titan and GTX 780 into all the testing. Well here is my reason, you see that the new architecture smashes the GTX 780 and around 40 points off the Titan; not bad for a $200 card! Overclocking and Overclocked Performance Now we see how these cherry picked parts come into play. For some reason, normal GPU-z wouldn't show the overclock on the memory, but Asus' version did. We see an increase of 8% boost clock and 10% memory clock over factory speeds; remember that this card is already factory overclocked. That means that this overclock has achieved a massive 23% core boost clock and 13% memory clock; not bad for a card that only costs 5% more. 3DMark Fire Strike With an extra 8% boost over the factory overclocks, we have achieved an average gain of 8% across the 3 tests. In the 4k test, there was an odd result, which yielded 17% increase. This test was performed 5 times in total and the results averaged at 17%, very nice for 'free' performance. Noise, Power Consumption and Temperatures Noise Everyone has their own reasonable noise level when it comes to comes to components in a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down, some want a completely silent computer. Gainward have spent a vast amount of money fine tuning their cooling solutions to provide excellent cooling properties, but also keeping the noise levels down, lets see if it's paid off shall we? Here we see the Phantom cooler coming into its own. The less power-hungry GTX 960 even undercuts the GTX 970 which uses exactly the same cooler by around 8-9dBA. Power Consumption With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components inside a desktop system so having an efficient graphics card is very important to keeping power bills under control. Power is often correlated to heat and so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and Nvidia have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming important to maximise performance. We take power readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. Due to Gainwards cherry picking process for all the components for this graphics card and other GLH series, the results really show. Utilising only the more performance ready and energy efficient components, we see a very low load power consumption, nearly 50% less than its predecessor. Temperatures The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make a note of the ambient; in the case where more than 1 GPU is used an average is created. The combination of that excellent Phantom cooling solution and much lower power consumption really shows during the load temperature test. We see it being cooler than every other card we tested by 4°c, 17°c cooler than the GTX 970 Phantom; this is simply incredible. Final Thoughts Price The Gainward Phantom GLH Geforce GTX 960 2GB has a MSRP of $210. Seeing as that is $10 more than the reference model, you would only expect minimal gains, but Gainward has piled in the features and technology into this model, making this an extremely attractive buy, even compared to other non-reference models. In the UK, Scan Computers are stocking this model for £174.98 + delivery, giving it a slight increase in price over a stock base model, but considering it includes a pre-factory overclock, one of the best coolers on the market and cherry picked parts; we think it's well worth the extra. Overview Using this graphics card has been a delight. Silent in the testing computer, even at full load; the PSU fan was still louder. I love the fact that you can take out the fans independently to clean. One thing that surprised me about this graphics card though, the actual heatsink is very small when compared to cards like the Sapphire Vapour-x, Trixx or Gigabyte Windforce x3, yet it still yields a much lower temperature. Maybe other manufacturers should take note and reverse mount their fans under the heatsink, even if it's a prototype. With all good, there has got to be some bad points. Generally when you progress down (or up depending on your view), you expect to have a noticeable gain over the previous technology. During my testing, the GTX 960 and GTX 760 we're switching places or even matching each others performance; that is however, a GTX 960 series flaw, not an issue with Gainward. A specific part I didn't like about the Gainward package was the ExperTool. The interface looked great, but trying to do any overclocking was a nightmare. The sliders were too small and close together to really understand what you were doing. I resorted using MSI Afterburner and Asus GPUTweak to do the final overclocks as these have a much better input system. If I was to change anything with this card, it would be to utilise 4GB. Even though we have yet to test a 4GB card, I can only speculate from the comparable 1080p and 1440p performance that this card could perform better at 4k if it had that little extra VRAM to boot. I would also change the input method on the ExperTool, to either larger sliders, up/ down arrows or even numerical input off the keyboard. Other than that, this has been a very pleasant test. Hopefully in the future, NVIDIA will release new drivers to get the most out of these amazing little cards. Pros Ingenious cooling solution Removable fans for cleaning Hand picked, top performing components Silent operation, no need for passive operation. Amazingly low power consumption Competitive price vs performance ratio Cons Poor 'next generation' performance, hopefully to be ironed out with new drivers Attractive, but poor user interface in ExperTool. "Those on a tighter budget should really consider the Gainward Phantom GLH GTX 960 2GB. Easy on the eyes and the pocket, and it games very well at the most common resolutions 1080p and 1440p." Thank you to Gainward for providing this review sample.

Hitman Absolution

Read Next

3070 Ti Vs 5070 Ti – 10 Games Benchmarked

RTX 3070 Vs RTX 5070 – 10 Games Benchmarked

The VRAM Lie: Why Graphics Cards Now NEED More Memory Than Ever

RTX 3060 Ti Vs RTX 5060 Ti – A Worthy Upgrade?

The RTX 50 SUPER Could be in Trouble!

RTX 50 SUPER – Buy Now Or Wait?

MSI RTX 5070 Ti Vanguard SOC Review

PNY RTX 5060 Ti 16GB OC Graphics Card Review

Is The RTX 5060 Ti 8GB The Perfect Free To Play Graphics Card? Ft. Inno3D Twin X2

INNO3D RTX 5060 8GB Twin X2 Graphics Card Review

ASUS RTX 5090 ASTRAL Liquid Cooled Graphics Card Review

Sapphire RX 9060 XT Nitro+ Graphics Card Review

XFX RX 9060 XT SWFT White Edition Graphics Card Review

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Vs RX 7600 XT – 30 Games Tested

INNO3D RTX 5070 Twin X2 Graphics Card Review

XFX QuickSilver RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition Graphics Card Review

RTX 3050 vs. RTX 5050 – 30 Games Benchmarked

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 8GB Graphics Card Review

RX 9060 XT Vs RTX 5060 Ti 16GB – 30 Games Tested

AMD RX 9060 XT Vs NVIDIA RTX 5060 – 30 Games Benchmarked @ 1080p, 1440p & 4K

Related Articles

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

New SEGA Mega Drive Unveiled – Plays Cartridges and ROMs

Win A PowerColor 7900 XTX Red Devil Graphics Card

Weekly Giveaway #18: Tt eSPORTS Fantastic Five

Adblock Detected