960M overlocking potential?

Really curious if this card has any potential since it's slotted to be my next main GPU.

Anyone had any luck in dealing with overclocking success? Just wondering really... Either way it'll be faster than the 560M I have. <u<

 

It depends on the brand you have. Most other brands (besides Clevo) do not have a modified vBIOS for their 860M/960M (exact same GPUs save their stock clocks), and are limited to an offset of +135 MHz on the core, and adjusting core voltage isn't allowed at all. Just asking, though - why 960M when the 970M is not much more expensive? The 960M really isn't future-proof.

 

As SRSR333 stated, it will overclock to +135MHz on core if it isn't locked down by the vendor. Clevo based notebooks usually aren't. But yeah, depends on your needs and cost. 960m is a 128-bit GPU, 970m is 192-bit GPU and significantly faster. If you can find a comparable system with a 970m I'd opt for that.

 

overclocking the VRAM does not work well on my machine. THe driver crashes when i up it more than 100MHz

But overclocking potential also really depends on the laptop you have and if it even has sufficient cooling to handle an overclock

 

You gain so little from overclocking this gpu, 960m it's not good anymore. Most games in 2016 will need higher requirements, with 960m you can only play at low-med setting on 900p-1080p.
I'd recommend 970m for 2016 minimum.

If you wanna see overclocked 960m benchmark see my sig.

 

Overclock this card most definitely does help. The 960m was never meant to be a power house card but it definitely works well with most of todays titles, I can play most at 1080p medium settings. It certainly won't work well beyond the next year IMO. The 970m as suggested is definitely more powerful, but even that card won't last much longer. I've had a 970m and it was great, but will require a larger laptop or much more sophisticated cooling system.

Since I have a Dell laptop, with the vBIOS embedded in the sBIOS, I can't overclock the core beyond the +135mhz core, but I can overclock my memory stable +500mhz (Samsung Memory). The memory overclock actually helps a lot, and helps relieve some of that 128-bit bus limitation. Temps are also great at just 70-75C depending on game. My first one would only peak at 71C in all games, but that must have had a better factory paste job. I'm too lazy to tear this entire laptop down to repaste it, maybe I'll get around to it soon.

 

Even the 965m would be a better option if you are trying to save every single cent.

 

Oh wow, talk about info! Thanks guys!

I was kinda trying to pinch pennies, but if the 970M really is that much better, should I just save up every penny I can muster and grab a 980M and be done with it? I was really trying to not drop the full $2000 of my budget on a laptop, since I don't like having so little left over.

I'm coming from the rig in my signature, so at this point... anything is an upgrade for me. You tell me what would be the best for my needs. These are the games I play most:

MWO
WoT
Space Engineers (PLANETS. I can't run it with planets. :C)
Company of Heroes 2 (I played a little, but even the 560M struggles at lowest settings)
Company of Heroes 1 (Blitzkrieg mod makes it a little more... graphic intensive, not nearly as bad, but still)

Essentially I just want to play these games at 1080p without many hiccups and on high settings.

 

Those games should play fine with 960m. Don't let everyone here scare you. I understand and also advocate best bang for the buck, which the 970m is at the moemnt, but also, it comes down to games you play and GPU availability and cost. If you don't play and have no desire to play any AAA titles released in the next couple of years the 960m will suffice just fine. If you can find a laptop you like with 970m that is no more than $150 more than the 960m, personally I'd opt for the 970m.

All up to you, though. The 960m is about three times more powerful than the 560m, about equivalent to desktop 750 Ti. CoH 2 will be the most demanding title in your list and is reliant on a decent quad core CPU as well, so your current machine with i7-2760QM may not cut the mustard with the 560m. You should be able to play 1080p medium settings fine though with a Broadwell or Skylake quad core and 960m.

 

There seem to be a lot of people seeking advice between mobile GPU's. I think someone should make a "Go to" thread for this, preferably someone with a good reputation and vast knowledge and experience with each GPU. A Moderator should then sticky it. Might be a good resource.

"Which GPU should I buy? Click here to find out!"

With that said, you should get the 970M, at the very least. If you want about 30% more performance for 20%-30% more money, go for the 980M. And you should try to get a system with the 6GB 970M. Might last you a bit longer with newer games utilizing 3GB+ VRAM. But no, it isn't necessary.

 

With all due respect - OP's list of games isn't particularly demanding (even Company of Heroes 2). So the extra $$ leap to the 970M (plus the 6 GB VRAM) probably is overkill.

@imglidinhere, the 960M is a very capable mid-range GPU. What we're all saying is that it probably won't do well for future high-end games (Cyberpunk 2077, any AC game, CoD, Battlefield, and the like).

If you're satisfied with somewhat lowering your graphics settings, then really, the 960M can handle 99.99% of games out there at a comfortable 50-60 FPS at 1080p, including even GTA V. Civ V? No problemo! Black Ops 3 should work fine, too. Only Witcher 3 probably will run at 40 FPS at 900p because it's ridiculously taxing.

Otherwise, get a laptop with a 960M, and feel free in knowing that it's a massive upgrade over your 560M!

 

I have the 960M. It looks better on paper than it does in real world performance. Trust me... It's far too weak for any new games (coming soon).* The performance benefit of the 970M over the 960M justifies the cost. It's a no-brainer, if you ask me.

*Unless you want to play at less than 1080p.

 

And I have the 860M. I know how well (or otherwise) it performs. As I said - if OP has zero intention of playing new games as they come out, then buying the 970M is pointless, no matter how cheap it is over the 960M.

However, if OP wants to play even a single new game that requires high-end specs, then the 970M is much more worth its price.

 

I never really understood the whole "well the games on OP's list aren't very demanding so OP should stick with the cheap GPU" mentality. I can't be the only one who played only what his machine could handle and then turned around and bought a new machine and expanded his gaming catalog to the limits of what his machine could do.

Before I bought my Clevo, I was mostly playing PS2 and PSP games via emulation on my M17xR1 and my Inspiron 17R but that's definitely not the case now. I don't even know if I have any emulators on here right now to be honest!

I would buy the 970M. Its the best bang for the buck card and when you get a new machine, its only logical that you're going to want to play new games. Its just like the consoles - people don't buy a PS4 because it can play PS1 and PS3 games, they buy it for the PS4 games, its just a bonus that they can play PS1 and PS3 games (and now the PS2 1080p ports). If you're not planning to play any new games, why upgrade at all?

 

yup, definitely go with the 970M or 980M (if you can afford it) and OC it to the limit!

 

The reason why I ask is because I can get the Inspiron 7559 from Amazon for $750 (with a $50 gift card here). Sooo if there are real improvements with grabbing a GTX 970M over that, then tell me now, because I can't really seem to justify buying a more powerful laptop if the GPU is literally going to double the overall price.

I never mentioned this bit either. Apologies for leaving that info out. >.<

 

I agree. for $750 that is quite the bargain. I bought that same laptop for my boys. It runs fine. They don't play any latest shooters or anything but they play Minecraft and a handful of Indie games and it runs those like a champ.

 

Yeah that laptop looks like quite a steal so I see why you would be leery about spending twice as much. That definitely changes the situation.

 

I'm three weeks away from making the buy, so this will be my ultimate final say before committing to the plan set.

Is that the best route for the games I play, or should I save up the extra cash for the upper level machines and grab a 970M?

 

Always. If you can swing the extra cash, go for best GPU you can afford. But at $750 it's hard to beat.

 

wait, save more, then buy the 970M.,

 

It's the point that 960m machine is $750. Cheapest 970m machine is likely $1300-$1400. I don't think the 970m is worth an extra $400-$500 over a 960m, if the 960m manages games he plays just fine. I understand the dilemma.

 

I agree as well.

 

If I wasn't so irritated with the issues and bad luck I've had with all the Refurbished machines, I'd have little issue in finding a suitable upgrade over the 960M... but I'm really gonna stick with the Inspiron I've been eyeballing.

The other issue was that the Inspiron machine I'm referencing comes with a 256GB M.2 SSD installed at the price I've mentioned. It's bar-none the best deal I've found for a NEW machine.


I just want to have a warranty again. >n<

 

I purchased the Inspiron and have been very pleased with it. Runs cool, and the i5 quad and 960m are great for most games. Its not a 970m, but performance can be gained because it overclocks +135/500ish on most no problem.

The only cons I've really found with the system were the stock screen (just a tad dim and I replaced it with a much higher end LG), and the track pad could be better. Other than that I think Dell did an excellent job of selling a durable, stylish, and cheap gaming laptop. For $750 you just cannot beat it.

 

$1200 is the cheapest I found a machine with a gtx 970m. And $1250 is the cheapest I found with a gtx 980m. Both are without OS. You can find them here at xoticpc here:
http://www.xoticpc.com/laptop-models-xotic-pc-force-laptops#!/dir=asc?order=price

So, get that if you can if you want to save money.

They're MSI, and not Clevo. The cons to those laptops is that they aren't running on desktop cpus, no DDR4 RAM, and no g-sync monitors. Current gaming laptops are mostly going towards that direction, so if you are cool with all of that then there you go. You'll still get the same fps. And there's no MXM slot, so I don't think you could upgrade the gpu, but that's the cheapest of those type of specs that I found.

And the 960m is solid. It's basically in the same league as the consoles and probably is around the 750ti level. I think it's a bit better. Anyway, that card could run the same level as the consoles on games. So, you would have to play around with it. You could handle things from low-mid specs. On high, I would expect you to hit around 30 fps. I don't think overclocking it would get you that far. Anyhow, you would have to play around with the settings. Test out a mixture of high and mid-low settting to get the best possible outcome. Consoles use a mixture of ultra and low settings. It seems they go ultra or high on textures, but low on shadows and draw distance. Sometimes they have a custom settings that's lower than "low" of the PC settings. So, try that that out for new triple AA titles. You also have to play around with the resolution. Check out how a 960m does with fps on different settings on this site:

960m specifically:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-960M.138006.0.html

Laptop cards overall:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.13849.0.html

With Company of Heroes 2, the 960m will play it at 16.2 fps on ultra on 1080p. So, if you don't like that then you might want another card. The gtx 970m will play it at 30.4 and the gtx 980m will play at 35 under the same settings.

Bottomline is that the gtx 960m should be able to play all future games, but don't expect to max out on it and get 60fps. Don't expect to play it on high with stable fps either. It might be around 30fps, it might not. You would have to fiddle with it. If you want more than that, save up for a gtx 970m and gtx 980m. Even a gtx 965m is better.

The gtx 970m would be able to handle most games on high 1080p with 50 fps or more. The gtx 980m is a beast and could handle mostly all current games on ultra with 60fps in 1080p.

Anyway, I hope this helped you out.

 

Alrighty, I went ahead and bought the Inspiron 7559 and I've gotta say, it's a great little machine. It's heavy, but packs a wallop in games. Only a few games I know of that really push the GPU to its limits, but overall I'm VERY happy with the 960M!

I mean... for instance, I was able to push every setting in the first Crysis to maximum at the native resolution (1080p) with AA off and had absolutely no issues. Only stutters in the heaviest firefights. (Last big bad machine I had featured a single GTX 470 way back when.)

Really appreciate you guys taking the time out to help me out with this. ^^ I'd have gotten a 970M machine, but I really doubted I'd have gotten such a GPU anytime soon. The price I paid, after estimated taxes and stuff, was $809.99 off Amazon.

 

Good to hear that you're happy with your purchase.

Consider downloading Nvidia Inspector, and overclocking the 960M. It's certainly a bang-for-buck GPU.

 

how about the 965m boys?

 

Not worth it. It's a gimped 970M, might as well get the 970M straight away.

 

Lol now who's not getting all the info? If there's a large price disparity shouldn't you be suggesting the 965M?

No but seriously, if there isn't a big difference between the price, the 970M is definitely a big upgrade.

 

See, this is where the issue is. I'm not sure exactly what the price of a notebook with a GTX 965M is (I actually found that GPU to be rather rare compared to the more common 960M and 970M), but, say, the notebook is only slightly ($50 - $100) more expensive than a notebook with the 960M, then might as well get the 965M. If it's only slightly cheaper than a notebook with a 970M, get the 970M.

 

Well said! Totally agree with you on this! Personally, I wouldn't get anything less than a 970M.. This thing is a beast and can easily be Oced to 980M speeds although this new one I have needs a bit of testing on my part to push to that level unlike my older one which was a golden sample IMO

 

I do agree with you guys about we should go for gtx 960m or at least gtx 970m.
But with the new gtx 965m is just around 20% slower than the current gtx 970m what do you think?
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-965M-2016-Refresh-N16E-GR-Review.158192.0.html

 

That's a nice performance bump but the pricing is what will make the difference. Guess that puts to bed the rumor of an x6x Pascal chip early this year, nice find.

 

Even if it is the 192bit 970M has a bandwidth advantage along with more cores etc... OC it and it will blow this away!

 

The reason for me buying the 960M-based laptop is pretty simple logic actually. Best way to end this is with facts.

The Inspiron here can be had for $859.99 after tax on Amazon.com. It comes with a full quad, a 4GB GTX branded video card, 8GB RAM with a second slot open, a 256GB solid state M.2 drive with a second 2.5" bay open and ready for use right away, furthermore it comes with an IPS screen that you generally only see on laptops of a much higher cost, top it all off with the fact that Windows 10 is already installed, so that's another $80-100 sliced off.

The next laptop that has anywhere near that level of hardware, SSD included, would cost over $1k easy. Heck, you can get a refurbished 970M laptop without an SSD for $1k... but it's refurbished... and refurbished doesn't always mean WORKING and rarely do they come with a warranty intact. For me, the overall price of this laptop was ~$810 for the hardware you see. If I were to go with a boutique brand like Sager or MSI, a 970M laptop with the same specs, OS included, would run me a solid $1400 at least, even with the best deals. Mind you, the closest Microcenter is in Atlanta, Georgia... I'm in Tallahassee, Florida. Not worth the drive if I spend $100 in gas just to get there.

So I could've saved up and gotten a better laptop, but I'd have to save up nearly double the cost, tapping into my tax return too, and use every penny I had incoming just to double my GPU horsepower? Sorry, but unless that GPU is capable of playing every modern day title at highest settings, it's not worth the price increase.

~$810 vs ~$1,500. There's no way to justify that kind of purchase when the next best choice is half the price. Sorry... but logic says "No."

 

Get whatever suits you .. At the end of the day, you have to pay for it not me or anyone else

And tbh it's a great deal!

 

That is one hell of a deal. I paid S$2200 (US$1500 or so) for my laptop with a GTX 860M back in 2014. Seriously - you can't get much better than what you've gotten, and I agree with you - the price doubling is not justified, since the 970M doesn't exactly double the performance of the 960M.

Once again - great purchase, and the important thing is that you're happy with it.

 

The title is not really corresponding to the content, I was coming to here read the usual overclocking numbers for 960M. Other than Talon at the first page nobody mentioned any numbers, which would be a good start point for me for overclocking.
So I've put Talon's numbers to NVidia Inspector; +135MHz GPU and +500MHz to Memory. It was stable, I've got P6497 points. I saw in NVInspector the Memory can be overclocked all the way to +2500MHz, Is safe to select such a high overclocking frequencies?

 

I dont know. My 965m is a great deal more powerful than a 960m. At london drugs a 950m laptop was 1159.99 this was the floor model for 1060 or 1116 after tax... Pretty unbeatable.. I personally believe in a little patience. If you checked out new egg you could be using a 965m... Why bother one might ask

Just cause 3 runs at 50fps all low off with 960m. And at all on maxed 50fps fxaa mind you. So would playing a game at all low off vs maxed for 100 more be worth it? Long story short you would be crazy not to get the 965m. This card will be good for 3 more years.. Yours is well playing at min settings.

 

On a more serious note, the 965M seems to be ~35% faster than the 960M, according to userbenchmarks (Google it). While the 965M has a nice price / performance ratio, I'd wait a month until Pascal is released, the 9XX based notebooks will get considerably cheaper and perhaps a mid end Pascal card is more attractive.

 

Hi... I used to be owner of sony vaio vpccb17fg with specs of i7-2620m + hd 6630m 1gb + 8gb ram + w7 64bit + 640gb hdd + FHD display.

Overall still at its best without sort of performance declining. But, my 6630 gradually couldn't facing any current gen game so i decide to buy another replacement laptop which is a laptop hp 8570w with specs of i7-3720qm + quadro k2000m 2gb + 8gb ram + fhd display +256gb ssd nvme + 2tb hdd + triple boot (xp + 7 +10) totally new that cost me for 850usd only! Overall im really satisfied ofthe prformance. But, its freakin heavy + bulky with the total of 5kg + charger!

Now, Im owning alienware 13 r2 withspecs of i7-6500u + gtx 960m 2gb + 8gb ram + 2x 256gb m.sata ssd + fhd display + dual boot(7+10). Overally, it is far superior in terms of everything than those 2&I glad to buy this beast only 1150usd!(1500usd on dell sites)

I have some questions regarding gtx960m. While i am using my vaio, i do able to overclock my 6630m from on 485/800 to become 700/1000 and all overall fps bump for almost one-third higher, e.g: RE 5 1080p high no AA at 30fps bump to 42 fps. 3d mark 06 at 7.2k jump into 9.6k by using saphire trixx. So do with my quadro k2000m that have one-fourth higher fps from 745/900 become 880/1200 and RE5 1080p high no AA at 40fps jump into 50fps + 3d mark06 from 12k become 15k by using nvidia inspctor. Overall i am really happy of it!

But, weird result happen to gtx 960m. Itried to bump from 1201/2505 into 1336/2805. I thought i will gain for at least20% fps increase for minimum. And while i am doing another tests, it turned out that the performance only bumping for 10% -12.5% in overall. At 3dmark06, i could only gain from 24k become 25.6k. RE 5 1080P 1080p no AA high 75fps jump into 82.5fps only and i tried with the others and overall are having similiar results for 12.5% - 15% in total! It makes me stresful!

My question: is there any way to let itjump for at least 20% performances? I amcurrently using nvidia inspector. Dont tell me overclocking is not good for laptop. I did these for years, never encounter anyartefacts until today & i know thetechniques how to do. Pls reply & thanksin advance!

 

The reason is simple: Your laptop is probably not able to keep up with the OC and it doesn't cool it properly to prevent thermal throttling, and hence the smaller increase in performance. This is why overclocking is generally bad on a laptop: The cooling solution is supposed to handle the stock frequencies of the GPU nice and steady, but once the GPU is overclocked, you might aswell want to repaste the it for better results.