KFA2 GeForce GTX 960 EXOC review - Conclusion

Conclusion

There will be many GeForce GTX 960 cards available on the market from a wide variety of brands and that makes choosing more difficult as we have not seen a really bad product out there. All cards tested to date reach, give or take, the same overclock / noise and heat levels with some offsets here and there of course. KFA2 brings a very nice product to the table, with excellent cooling levels I should add. Where the reference cards operate at 70 to 80 degrees C you'll notice that this puppy shaves off another 20 degrees C on average under full load gaming conditions, roughly 65 degrees C whilst being whisper silent. Holy smokes batman !

KFA2 offers a GTX 960 with the end result being the EXOC series. It comes factory overclocked at a boost frequency of over 1266 MHz which is impressive all by itself really, interesting to see is that most cards we tested have a raised power limiter, you should not be surprised to see your card even clocking in at 1400 MHz on that boost frequency. And that is the savior of the GTX 960 really, a 128-bit memory bus and 2 GB of memory with a GPU shader count half that of the GTX 980. Despite all that these cards do perform nicely for the 1080P gamers, the high clock frequency makes all the difference. So yes, if you are gaming at a monitor resolution up-to 1920x1080 then this product will be pleasant in terms of price versus performance versus a nice quiet product. I can't wait for 4GB models, though such a release is still not confirmed.

Maxwell GM206 GPU experience overall

The GeForce GTX 960 is a pretty complicated piece of technology in terms of what Nvidia offers to its partners and what they made out of it. I am afraid though that Nvidia took it a step too far trying to make the product as cheap as possible. Many of you will not get by the fact that the 128-bit memory bus combined with 2GB of graphics memory will cripple anything after 1080P. I think people could have lived with the 128-bit bus if the product would have had 3GB of graphics memory or the other way around. When you place all facts into perspective then we do feel the product is rather capable, but everybody certainly expected somewhat higher specs in this 200 EURO mainstream space. As such my bet is that we'll see a 960 Ti with maybe 256-bit / 1280 shader processors as well. But performance wise the product will sit in-between a GeForce GTX 760 and a Radeon R9 280 / 7970. Like the specs or not, this is still a respectable number. Pricing wise, expect values in the 199 USD/EURO range with the luxurious boards being a tenner or two more expensive.

Thermals

The reference products are set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C, with a product of this cooling caliber, the numbers will be much lower. GALAX aka KFA2 on their end applied an better dual-slot dual fan cooler. It's a good performing cooler overall; you can expect the temperature to hover around the 60~65 Degrees C threshold with the games that are harder on the GPU. Remember, that is factory overclocked cooling performance for you. Thanks to the fairly low temps, the boost limiters do not kick in as fast and yeah, as stated, do not be surprised to see this card rendering your games at a boost frequency of 1400 MHz.

Cooling versus noise levels

Cooling wise we can’t complain, noise wise it is a good product. You can hear only a tiny bit of airflow, that's it. So expect sound pressure values in the 39 dBA range at best under load and warm circumstances. That's measured 75 CM away from the PC, thus a normal distance in-between you and your PC. At best you can hear airflow from the card while using them heavily. We did not hear any coil whine. However if you place your ear directly on top of the card, sure you can hear some (I doubt you game that way though :) )

Performance

The performance of the GeForce 960 series overall is okay if you stick to 1080P. The biggest danger lies in the fact that 2GB of graphics memory these days isn't going to cut it with the modern game titles versus good image quality settings. Obviously you can forget about 2560x1440 WHQD resolution gaming, but considering the price, in all fairness we need to say, this is really a 1080P card. Again, the most tricky thing will be 2GB, once the card runs out of memory frames will start swapping back and forth in the frame-buffer, resulting in a performance loss. The only way to solve that is to lower AA settings or image quality overall. Overall it will be a fun and sweet Full HD gaming product and yeah, though the specs are a little less exciting, really we are not disappointed by the performance if 1920x1080 is your gaming domain.

Tweaking

Without extra voltage tweaking you can expect a 1450 MHz range for the boost clock frequency. Depending on how much your board will take and allow, with voltage tweaking you’ll reach the up-to a 1550 MHz range on the dynamic boost frequency. Roughly 1.55 GHz was our maximum. Variables like your PC stability, power supply and so on are important to any overclock, keep that in mind. The memory is clocked standard at 7.0 GHz, you'll fairly easily achieve 7.5 GHz up towards 8 GHz, you should probably settle at 7.8 GHz for utter stability. Since this card is so limited with its 128-bit memory bus, tweaking that memory will help tremendously as it increases memory bandwidth and thus performance.

Final Words

KFA2 has a very competitive product in their hands with the EXOC, it is one of the faster factory models available. From top to bottom, in terms of factory overclocked cards versus the several brands, the difference in FPS can be up-to 4 frames on average with a modern game and decent image quality settings. So what i am saying is that the ultra fast clocked version won't be heaps faster, do remember that when you open up your wallet. Gaming at WQHD / 2560x1440 is ill-advised, 1080P is golden yet the maximum with this card combined with pretty decent image quality settings. The temperature levels of the EXOC are great, thermal imaging shows nothing special or weird. Remember, Galaxy in Europe was KFA2, then GALAX and after a wee bit of branding issues in the EU you will see the KFA2 branding now introduced again.

It's all the same manufacturer with just a different sticker and box. We can say though that KFA2 outs quality stuff, we really dig what they have done with this product. Proper cooling, proper thermals, proper low noise levels and for a GTX 960 proper performance, you can't complain really, no Sir. It is amazing to see how high the Maxwell architecture generation products can clock, even on 28nm. Nvidia should have been on 20nm already, but we are starting to doubt that will ever happen, they might just hop onward to the next train called 16nm.

Overall the product is getting my thumbs up (I am wearing batman gloves right now) from most viewpoints, I would have liked to see a bit more memory in this price class anno 2015, but perhaps that is wishful thinking. The KFA2 EXOC performs well at Full HD, even combined with very decent image quality settings. You can find the EXOC starting this week. This model as tested today you can find for roughly 219 EURO/ 229 USD. Definitely recommended for those on a sharp 200~250 USD budget.

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me" - Bruce Wayne

Recommended  Downloads

• Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
• Or go back to Guru3D's front page