Palit GeForce GTX 960 JetStream Unboxing & Review

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Category: PC Video Cards
Release: 2015
Price: P9,900
Bought from: PC HUB (Gilmore Branch)

After three whole years of being work and play buddies with my Inno3D GTX 560, I felt it was time to part ways and move on to something new and more modern- enter Palit GeForce GTX 960 JetStream! It’s a relatively new mid-tier GPU that performs as the sixth current best of all GeForce cards upon release.

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I purchased it at PCHub for P9,900. I believe it was supposed to be above P10,000 but I got a discount for being a TipidPC member. Make sure you register there online first to get various discounts from the shop!

The next tier after 960 is the GTX 970 which is priced around P16,000 and then the GTX 980 costing around P26,000. After some research, I was able to determine that the 960 is good enough for me since it’s already capable of rendering heavily layered HD multimedia projects. It can also play the latest games in high to high settings, too!

Here’s a photo of the packaging as I got it from the store:

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What’s in the big box? Pretty much the usual expected items- manuals, cables, DVD installer, stickers and of course the GPU itself. The box was actually too big for its contents. But I guess there’s a marketing ploy there somewhere! The box has a neat handle at the top so it was easy to transport as is.

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PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Memory Amount 2048MB
Memory Interface 128bit
DRAM Type GDDR5
Graphics Clock Base Clock : 1203MHz / Boost Clock : 1266MHz
Memory Clock 3600 MHz (DDR 7200 MHz)
CUDA Cores 1024
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 115.2
NVIDIA G-SNYC
NVIDIA SLI-ready 2-way
NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready
NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology
NVIDIA PhysX-ready
NVIDIA CUDA Technology
NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0
NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync
NVIDIA Dynamic Super Resolution [DSR] technology
NVIDIA MFAA technology
NVIDIA GameWorks technology
NVIDIA GameStream technology
NVIDIA SHIELD ready
Microsoft DirectX 12
OpenGL 4.4
Bus Support PCI-E 3.0 x 16
Certified for Microsoft Windows 7
Certified for Microsoft Windows 8
Maximum Digital Resolution 4096×2160
Maximum VGA Resolution 2048×1536
Dual-Link DVI Yes x2
HDCP
HDMI Yes
DisplayPort Yes
Height 2.5 Slot
Board Length 247mm
PCB Width 247mm x 126mm
Graphics Card Power 120 W
Minimum Recommended System Power 400 W
Supplementary Power Connectors 6-pin X1
Accessory Manual, Driver Disc, Power Cable, DVI-CRT Adapter

END SPECIFICATIONS

The specs in layman’s terms: you can pretty much play games, edit videos and watch movies in 4k resolution- given that your other PC parts are up to par. 3D and triple monitor gaming are also supported.

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Comparing it to my old GTX 560, it isn’t really much of a jump since they’re both in the same 60 tier, but replacing old computer parts is part of good overall maintenance. It eliminates the risk of your hardware breaking down due to wear-and-tear as well as new driver incompatibilities.

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gtx960-8-9362616 The new and the old!

To be honest, I really wasn’t sure whether it will even fit inside my desktop casing. I looked up the measurements of my motherboard, the GPU and my CPU casing and the numbers looked okay. But one can’t bee too sure. It fits, but with one problem: the card is too long that it blocked the SATA sockets! Good thing I had L-shaped cables and those pretty much solved the case.

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After a few months of usage I can genuinely say, without a hint of any doubt, that editing videos and playing games (FFXIV is the only PC game I play) have been a much better experience since upgrading. Faster and smoother renders to be precise. So if you’re looking for a GPU on the average budget of P10,000, this might be the one for you too.

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