I don't think 960 was aimed at anything beyond 1080p tbh. It's a mainstream card for the most mainstream of resolutions. Kudos to AMD for rebranding Tahiti. It worked out well for them, albeit not ideal for an efficient next gen part.
Right but once future games come out, there will be increased GPU load. That's the reason a lot of us look at higher resolutions and how cards fare vs. one another even if we ourselves use a lower resolution. Since know that future games will increase GPU load 50-100%, as an example, seeing how a card fares at 1440P and 4K allows us to see what happens in a GPU-limited scenario and how the card can handle the extra load. In this case, the 960 falls apart compared to the 280X and even more so compared to the R9 290.
And you're right, AMD are certainly the value option. Many people value more than simply price/perf though, like feature set, support, efficiency, cooling, noise.
It's very difficult to defend the $200 GTX 960 2GB because the gamer who buys it might upgrade to a 60-70% faster Pascal x60 series card in 1.5-2 years for another $200. Why do that when you can have 60%+ more performance for the next 1.5-2 years with a $50 more expensive R9 290? The 960 is the worst buy in NV's line-up today. Casual gamers would be OK with a 750/750Ti. $200 960 2GB and $240 960 4GB sit in no man's land. Buying a 960 means going out and wasting yet another $200 in 2 years as I said, which actually ends up costing $150 more and for the next 1.5-2 years you end up with a card 50-60% slower than an after-market R9 290.
Your insinuations about noise and temperatures do not fly because after-market R9 290s run in the 70-80s range and are quiet. The PSU argument doesn't work either because one can easily find solid PSUs such as the Antec 750W Gold rated with 5 year warranty for only
$50. This PSU will easily last 7-10 years, if not more.
Efficiency and perf/watt on the desktop on their own are just marketing words without context. With a GTX960 in demanding situations you literally get
half or even less than half the
performance of an R9 290. What difference does it make if your card is more efficient but it's unplayable in modern titles? Might as well use Wii U or Intel IGP to argue perf/watt.
Also, care to tell me what these amazing killer features that GTX960 has that warrants a
61% loss in gaming performance and half the VRAM against a $50 more expensive after-market R9 290 that is also cool and quiet? I am all ears. No need to discuss my career choices btw. If you have a rebuttal to the points I made earlier and in this post, please stick to GPUs please from a technical point of view. Even SLI can't save the 960 because an
after-market R9 290 = 290X reference and that's roughly as fast as 960 SLI. It's interesting how you are quick to dismiss this 50-61% performance advantage but then why get a 960 over a 750Ti?
Also, many on this forum seem to be confused about preferences for value and gaming performance and price/performance that AMD brings with the gamer preferring AMD. If NV brought all of that to the table, I would be recommending their product(s), like I recommended 6600GT/6800GT/GTX460/GTX470/8800GT, get it? Is it my fault now that $2K Titan SLI is only 14% faster than R9 280X/7970Ghz CF or that a $400 R9 290 > Titan or that a $550 R9 290X > $699 780Ti?
If I bought dual 780s for $1300 or dual 780Tis for $1400 or $2K Titans and I saw today $800-1100 R9 290s/290Xs beating those cards, I would feel ripped off/upset because initially those cards had an advantage and hence their pricing premium was somewhat justified. Whether or not NV intentionally stopped optimizing drivers for Kepler and diverted more attention to Maxwell or if Maxwell is simply a superior architecture long-term for compute isn't even the point anymore. The reality is 1-1.5 years from 780/780Ti/Titan launch, the far cheaper AMD CF setups are outperforming Kepler, including the uber expensive $2k Titans; and this was already evident 6 months ago. This review today just supports what we saw
months ago. Imo, those PC gamers who were able to score R9 290/Xs for free due to bitcoin mining are the real winners in the Kepler vs. R9 200 series generation. Too bad where I worked there were no R9 290 cards or I would have had 2-3 free R9 290Xs for 15-18 months already.