Hardcore gamers make up but a tiny portion of the PC consumer market. Everyone knows that, especially Nvidia, so it seems a bit surprising that an affordable GTX 900-series video card has yet to appear.
Yes, the GTX 970 is low-cost compared to the flagship 980, but at $330 and up it isn’t an option for folks looking to build a solid but unambitious system on a tight budget. Thankfully, your prayers will be answered at last in January, at least according to the rumor mongers over at SweClockers.
The rumor calls for a GeForce GTX 960 announcement at CES in Las Vegas, followed by a commercial debut “towards the end of January.” The 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show opens its doors on January 6, and closes them three days later.
Nvidia spoke about its latest architecture, Maxwell, at its CES 2014 press conference, and rolled out the first products built on the architecture a month or so later. The GTX 750 and 750 Ti were followed by the high-end GTX 980/970 lineup.
Supposedly capable of performing on-par with the GTX 770, the 960 is tipped to come with an all-new GM206 processing unit in tow. This will replace the GM204 found inside both the GTX 970 and 980, and guarantee decent speed at lower power consumption levels and noise.
The card is also expected to sport 2GB GDDR5 memory as standard and cost no more than $300. We think that’s a bit low, to be frank; 3GB would be preferable. Still, keeping the price down will be a priority, and it may difficult to do that while expanding RAM.
