Power, Temperature and Noise
Here's where the balance of power may begin to shift in favour of GTX 960. Nvidia's latest GPU wasn't the quickest in our benchmarks but it's easily the most efficient and consumes up to 40 per cent less power than AMD's R9 280X when gaming. If you're still rocking a GTX 660 and want to upgrade to something that's much faster and more efficient, GTX 960 is the only option.
Low power consumption makes GM206 a relatively easy GPU to tame. Despite the factory overclock, Asus has no trouble keeping the core running below 60ºC when gaming. The higher-than-usual idle reading can be attributed to the fact that the DirectCU II fans turn off automatically when temperature is low.
Low power and low temps should mean very little noise and Asus delivers. The card is silent when idle and couldn't be heard over our chassis fans while gaming. It's very, very quiet and would be well suited to a HTPC environment.
