gtx960m capability

I am looking to buy a new laptop within the next few months and have been mainly looking at either the new Lenovo Y50, acer aspire v15 black nitro edition or asus ROG GL551 all with gtx 960m and i74720 cpu.

I was curious how good it could run The Witcher 3 as that is one of the new titles I wish to play along with DA Inquisition, Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor, Battlefield etc.
1080p on medium or even 720p with 30 fps on the high demanding games would be ok with me.

Let me know what you guys think.

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-960M-Review.137893.0.html

scroll down to the chart listing fps on recent games on different settings (@ 1080p).

 

thank you, im guessing the witcher fps will be close to AC Unity and Watch dogs?

Would you recomend any of these laptops?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1&cm_re=PPSSMGFUQQEWLU-_-34-314-849-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1&cm_re=PPSSMGFUQQEWLU-_-34-232-404-_-Product

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Y50-Laptop-i7-4720HQ-1920x1080/dp/B00TZIK0F8

 

i dont know for witcher 3 but rest of the mentioned games should be playable well on 1080p ultra with no aa and overlock +135mhz on 30-40fps.Only in dragon age you will need to compromise by lowering tesselation if i remember it right cause it had one very demanding feature but its not a big deal.Witcher 3 maybe if its ends up as a okay port on medium on 1080p with no aa

 

Console-level quality and performance, at least, for the rest of the current generation

 

Witcher 3 is going to murder the 960M. I doubt 1080p is feasible.

 

I figured 1080p wouldnt be the best but it would still run at 720p on this system correct?

 

Even better, 900p or 792p

 

Awesome that will be more than enough for me. Would you recommend any one of the laptops I mentioned above over the others?

 

I'd avoid the Nitro, as I've heard of people having Wifi and touchpad issues. Of the other two, I dunno. I hate those touchpads that don't have actual r/l buttons.

If Witcher 3 was what I was looking forward to, I'd take the Sager NP8651 over any of those three. Or at least the NP8650. Both GPUs of these poop all over the 960M rebrand.

 

dont go for asus. cant say about this concrete model.. but mosly quality are really bad(((

 

Running 960m benchmarks to be published soon.

 

Is there a 2GB VRAM version and a 4GB VRAM? I see that in the specs of the y50 and nitro claiming a 4GB but can not find it online anywhere else?

 

4gb vram is better but you said you are going to buy it next couple of months?Amd will soon publish their new gpu's and directx12 scales way better on amd hardware from what i read.Maybe its worth to wait for new gpu's of amd

 

Get the 4 gigs for sure... Some games now have insane vRam utilization (Dying light on my 880 uses 3.5 - 4.5 vRam for god knows why kindda reason) don't get me wrong the game looks super fine but I think poor games optimization calls for larger ram pool

 

why not 965M and OC that memory for less bottleneck if the cash difference is not very high

 

I wish more laptops were being offered with the 965M as it seems to be a quantifiable improvement over the 960M/860M.

 

GTX 965M's 2 GB version is and will be a problem on many games. I have yet to see its 4 GB version but I really hope it will come out. Even now many titles consumes 2 GB vRAM at high to ultra presets. You will have to downgrade the graphics even if its horsepower is enough. And its power is more than enough. I'm glad that NVIDIA decided to release GTX 870M with 3 GB vRAM. I won't bare with downgrading graphics because of my vRAM is insufficient.

 

965m should have been the 960m, and 860m rebranded as 950m. But alas, 960m=860m, and 965m has no home.

 

Just wanted to make a note here: the GTX 970M is a HUGE performance improvement over the GTX960M. Poop all over the 960M rebrand indeed.
P.S. thanks HTWingNut for your review of the Sager NP8651. It was super helpful, and yours was the first post I saw on this forum.

 

What are yopu playing with now HT? Clevo N155SD/N170SD or the W230SD? My guess would be W230SD.

 

I also think that 2GB is too less. Even 3GB on the 970m sounds not much. The only laptop I have seen currently with 4GB on the 965m is the Gigabyte P35K v3.

 

Yep W230SD.

And people are still freaking out about vRAM. The 965m is similar performance to a desktop GTX 660 or 750 Ti, and they performs fine with 2GB vRAM. 2GB is probably a good balance for its performance. Up until a year ago, desktop CPU's had max 3GB vRAM, and likely still would had Maxwell not run with 256-bit bus but at 384-bit. I could see possibly SLI being an issue, but if there is a laptop with 965m SLI, I'd hope they'd populate it with 4GB vRAM each.

 

LOL... what?? I'm sorry but I was though you are informed about these subjects. No it is not good for its performance, it is horrible in terms of balancing. The owners of the 2 GB GTX 965M will have to lower the graphics because of the low vRAM while its horsepower is sufficient.

Notebookcheck already point it out in their article:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-XMG-P705-Clevo-P670SA-Notebook-Review.134178.0.html
"The ultra results of Watch Dogs, Shadow of Mordor and Assassin's Creed Unity actually show that 2 GB VRAM is not perfect anymore. Even though the GTX 860M in the table is not based on the Maxwell technology, it is hardly slower and sometimes even faster – thanks to 4 GB VRAM."

Notebookcheck's article is rather optimist. My GTX 870M's vRAM usage exceeds 2 GB in Far Cry 4 and CoH 2 too while the games perfectly playable. GTX 965M's horse power is almost identical to GTX 870M, they should've released it with more vRAM.

 

vRAM usage does not equate to vRAM *required*. I've validated this myself with 3GB 970m and 6GB 970m with Shadow of Mordor and CoD AW. There is NO difference in performance even though 5-6GB are shown as being utilized on the 6GB version. Same thing with 980m 4GB vs 980m 8GB. It's hard to validate that without running BOTH 2GB and 4GB versions.

That page you link they say 860m Kepler an outperform 965m, but 965m outperforms (albeit minor) the 860m Kepler, based on their own benchmarks, both Assassin's Creed Unity, and Shadow of Mordor. And the FPS you're talking about 17-20FPS, which is NOT playable. Drop the details and you'll get well over 30fps and vRAM usage also drop considerably. The 128-bit bus is the bottleneck, not the 2GB vRAM. If it had a 192-bit or 256-bit bus then I might be inclined to believe it.

 

I thought the 6GB and 8GB editions were mostly for running SLI, since data needs to be duplicated over both cards with SLI...
Oops, I hope I'm not derailing the original conversation, am I?

 

Yes, more vRAM makes sense for SLI machines. But for a single mid-range GPU, 2-3GB is adequate.

 

I don't understand. The performance clearly drops when the 2 GB vRAM is insufficient. I claim that 4 GB version will have no problem whatsoever like this. Look at Kepler GTX 860M.

Notebookcheck says "hardly slower and sometimes even faster" in their article which is true. Yes, GTX 965M barely outperforms GTX 860M Kepler in AC Unity and Shadow of Mordor. BUT GTX 860M Kepler outperforms GTX 965M in Watch_Dogs which you didn't bother to mention it. So their "hardly slower and sometimes even faster" claim is true, I don't see anything wrong about it.

You're right, 17-20 FPS is certainly not playable but I was actually talking about my GTX 870M's performance there. You said drop the details and you'll get over 30fps and vRAM usage also drop considerably. This is not also true for me. Look at my screenshots taken from AC Unity, Far Cry 4 and Watch_Dogs. You can clearly see the vRAM and FPS at the top left:

Watch_Dogs:
http://i.imgur.com/RSDkcLl.jpg

Far Cry 4:
http://i.imgur.com/ObUWLjC.jpg

AC Unity
http://i.imgur.com/qMvAtlm.jpg

You can see the games are perfectly playable and the settings not even MAXED OUT. So I assume GTX 965M needs at least 3 GB vRAM as GTX 870M because their power almost identical. Isn't that right? GTX 965M has 128 bit bandwitdh yes but it can perform the same level as GTX 870M 192 bit because of its new architecture. When its vRAM is identical too of course.

 

That still doesn't prove anything unless you run the same game/scenes on a 3GB and measure FPS and frametime to compare. My 970m has 3GB and I run those games and they show 3GB used, so what does that mean?

965m has 80GB/sec vs 870m's 120GB/sec bandwidth which is 50% more. Maxwell has more L2 cache but that's not going to come close to making up for that 50% bandwidth difference. 965m would perform much better on a 192-bit bus, but then it would have performed too close to the 970m. I don't doubt that 2GB vRAM is borderline for the 965m, and it's a unique case, but for 960m, 950m, 2GB is more than adequate.

Until we get side by side comparison of 2GB vs 4GB or 3GB vs 6GB and FPS difference is more than 5%, and max frame times are more than double on the smaller vRAM size, I still think it's more "sky is falling."

 

Is this thread about 960M or 965M?

Anyway I agree with HTWingNut on this one. A 2GB 965M will run out of processing power before or around the same time it runs out of VRAM. Go read reviews of the desktop 960 which is nearly identical to 965M except it's GM206 instead of GM204. Its VRAM is not the limiting factor compared to 3GB AMD cards in the same performance class like the 280 and 280X. Desktop users seem to understand this more often than not compared to laptop users, which is why the 4GB 960 was met with ridicule when it was announced. Guess we've been fooled by the excessive amounts of VRAM on mobile GPUs for too long.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1888-evga-supersc-4gb-960-benchmark-vs-2gb

 

I think the point is that these cards aren't going to be very playable with settings that would make the vram the bottleneck since the core would have hit its ceiling before that. 3GB is too little for my 780 Ti to do ultra in a number of games but if it had the core performance that an 860/960/965 mobile card has, it wouldn't be a bottleneck at all because I would know ultra settings won't be playable in the first place even with more vram.

 

Great article thanks. Seems Ubisoft games like vRAM. I wouldn't use that as a benchmark though because Ubisoft games are usually total unoptimized pieces of feces. But I guess that doesn't change the fact that they make use of the vRAM. Probably mostly due to the 8GB of GDDR5 on the consoles, everything is handled in the vRAM.

I guess I wouldn't fret it. 965m is borderline with 2GB, 960m should absolutely be no issue. Just go buy an 8GB 980m and you'll be set.

Right. That's the point I was trying to make. At 1080p, 2GB is right at the "sweet spot" I think. Unfortunately they'd have to bump up to 4GB which would vastly increase cost of the mid-range GPU. They really should have made the 965m 192-bit and clocked accordingly to fit between 960m and 970m. That would have allowed for 3GB vRAM and relieved that occasional bottleneck. But it is what it is. If you opt for 965m either accept for what it is or go for a 970m.

 

If anything, it shows that 4GB would more likely than not be wasted on a 965M. Keep in mind, the factory overclocked 960 cards they tested are a good 40% faster than 965M all around. 1317/1342 MHz vs. 950 MHz core. 7 Gbps vs. 5 Gbps GDDR5. 112 GB/s vs. 80 GB/s memory bandwidth. With only 1/7 tests (AC Unity) showing a marked improvement with 4GB VRAM on a pair of much faster 960 cards, what's to say 965M wouldn't be bottlenecked elsewhere before it hits the VRAM wall? Is its memory subsystem even fast enough to fill 2GB+ at a playable level of performance?

 

And you can guarantee that is exactly the logic that nVidia had here... Cripple the 965M enough to make people opt for the more expensive option.

 

Well the 970M isn't much more expensive then the 965M.. In fact laptops with 970M are sometimes cheaper then ones with 965M... The 965M just makes no sense to me..

 

Probably the marketing team saying too big a performance gap between the 960M and the 970M will hurt sales. Which it will, of course. And even with the 965M, it still does.
I definitely agree with you. It doesn't make sense from a technical standpoint. But the GTX 970M really is in the sweet spot for best price for performance. You get the most for what you pay, and the 970M will obsolete much, much slower than the 960M will.
If OP has the option, I would definitely recommend OP get a computer with the GTX 970M rather than 960M. Most of the OP suggested laptop series, like Lenovo's Y series, Acer's Nitro series, and Asus' ROG series, likely either won't have laptops with the 970M, or they will be pretty expensive.
But there are plenty of great laptops with the 970M that are within the price range of those laptops. Some of which have already been suggested.

Now, the Witcher 3 is the most graphically intensive game you have on your list. And while some here have claimed that the GTX 960M won't be able to handle the Witcher 3 well (and rightly so), NVidia themselves make a different claim, saying that the game is offered with the 960M because "GeForce GTX 980, 970 or 960, which’ll give you the performance you need as well as a free copy of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt*."
So, if you are resolute on getting the 960M, and want to know whether you'll be able to run the game (regardless of what detail setting you have the game on)... yes, you should be able to run it.
Edit: information was incorrect. The Witcher 3 is not bundled with the GTX 960M, but only the desktop 960 GPU. Thanks to octiceps for catching my error.

 

The 960m is just the 860m on steroids. Whatever the 860m could do the 960m can do plus a tiny bit more since the upped clocks and all. Overall still same architecture so youre gonna get about the same performance regardless. The 965m is where you get the real architecture upgrade to the next step up but even then the difference between the 965m an 970m, the 965m gets blown away.

The 965m though, has pretty much more or less the same performance as the 780m which is quite respectable. (Within about a 10% margin of error performance difference)

 

The 965M is hardly cheaper then the 970M so might as well get the 970M and troll everyone especially poor 780M owners like @Papusan

 

Haha true that, but maxwell is pretty impressive that its "somewhat entry level" spec card is within margin of error of last generations top end

 

This is incorrect. Witcher 3 is bundled with select desktop 960/970/980 cards and 970M/980M notebooks. 965M and below do not qualify.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9072/...g-geforce-game-bundle-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

 

Ah, you're right! My bad then. I'll change that.
Thanks! I edited my post to reflect the correct info. Sorry if I caused anybody confusion.

So in the end, I guess the 960M really isn't guaranteed to handle the Witchter 3. It might, of course, but it's not for sure.

 

960M is equivalent to 750 Ti/650 Ti Boost, which is just below the minimum required 660 or 7870. Ofc this assumes the system requirements are realistic in the first place which remains to be seen.