facebook rss twitter

Review: KFA2 GeForce GTX 960 EXOC

by Parm Mann on 27 January 2015, 17:05

Tags: KFA2, GALAX, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacodk

Add to My Vault: x

Conclusion

the £180 EXOC has terrific overclocking potential and could quite easily pass the 1,500MHz mark.

Though performance pales in comparison to the dearer GeForce GTX 970, Nvidia's third-tier GTX 960 warrants consideration if your existing GPU is no longer able to cope with the demands of high-quality 1080p gaming.

Delivering good performance in an energy-efficient package, the GTX 960 is at its best when priced competitively and positioned as a slot-in upgrade for older machines.

KFA2 has limited some of that appeal by imposing an eight-pin PCIe connector as a minimum requirement, but on the flip side the £180 EXOC has terrific overclocking potential and quite easily passes the 1,500MHz mark. The amount of available headroom makes KFA2's shipping frequency appear particularly conservative, and the manufacturer has, we feel, missed a trick by not including overclocked memory as standard.

A capable performer that's energy efficient and extremely quiet during use - the EXOC fits the GTX 960 mould, but the £180 price tag is inching further from the £150 sweet spot.

The Good
  
The Bad
Well suited to 1080p gaming
Runs cool and quiet
Class-leading energy efficiency
Can be pushed further
  
Only one DisplayPort output
2GB frame buffer not future proof
Requires 8-pin power connection
Stock-clocked memory



KFA2 GeForce GTX 960 EXOC

HEXUS.where2buy

The KFA2 GeForce GTX 960 EXOC graphics card is available to purchase from Overclockers UK.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.


« PREVIOUS PAGE

HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Posted by CustardInc - Tue 27 Jan 2015 17:29
It'd be nice to see the GTX 770 in these benchmarks, and if the 970's there you might as well throw in the 290
Posted by paulie_boy - Wed 28 Jan 2015 08:36
looks good im due for a upgrade before GTA V comes out for PC
Posted by this_is_gav - Wed 28 Jan 2015 08:37
CustardInc
It'd be nice to see the GTX 770 in these benchmarks, and if the 970's there you might as well throw in the 290

This annoys me about reviews in general. The sort of people who are going to read these are those likely to be those upgrading/moving from an existing product, not only seeing what is best at a given time, so it would be nice to compare.

I myself have recently moved from a GTX 560 TI, but finding solid comparisons against the current gen from a reputable source was near impossible.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of Intel CPUs from 2008 or so onwards, as I'm still on an i7 920 and see little reason to upgrade given the apparent lack of progress, so my only thought when reading CPU reviews is “is mine still competitive” rather than “wow, it rars files 10% faster than some other product which also has no relevance to me”. Heck, I'm still on a Q6600 at work, and that feels relevant, but how much of a gain would I get moving to a Broadwell or Extreme model?

I appreciate it isn't always practical for reviewers to compare numerous iterations of a product, but a smattering of existing products in selective charts would be useful, as we could then compare them to reviews from their era.
Posted by Fus - Wed 28 Jan 2015 12:25
Well said gav, I also don't see why they have to benchmark using an overclocked I7 and SSD.
I suggest we do our own test to supplement Hexus tests.

I just ran the Tomb Raider bench on my i5 3570K, stock speed, 12Gb 1600mhz RAM and a failing (needs ironing every two weeks :) ) Asus GTX580 DCUII. (1.5Gb )
Yes, the game runs off an SSD but anyhoo….

I get 48.5 min, 62.3 max and an average fps of 59.5, Ultra preset.

Based on that I see no reason to buy a new card unless the current one goes completely duff.

There is a huge con going on in the GPU / CPU world, clever words and pretty pictures used to entice people to dump perfectly good hardware and pay roughly the same amount again for a mediocre improvement.