Featuring 2.9 billion transistors on a 294mm² 28nm die, the GM206 packs 1024 CUDA cores (8 SMMs and 2GPCs), 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs and comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a narrower 128-bit memory interface. If you take a closer look at these specifications you can clearly see that the GM206 is exactly one half of a fully-enabled GM204 GPU, which is used in the flagship Geforce GTX 980.

While the Geforce GTX 960 could be crippled by a narrower 128-bit memory interface, Nvidia's new memory compression technology with third generation Delta Color Compression, as well as caching improvements, should increase effective memory bandwidth, something that we have see on GM204 based GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards. The new Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 also brings new "Maxwell" features we have seen with the GTX 980 and the GTX 970, including new MFAA (multi-frame sampled anti-aliasing), real-time voxel illumination, Dynamic Super-Resolution, G-Sync and ShadowPlay support.

The TDP of the Geforce GTX 960 is set at 120W and it draws power from a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector, although we expect some factory-overclocked custom graphics cards to feature an 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. The Geforce GTX 960 comes with DVI, HDMI and three DisplayPort outputs.

Although most Nvidia AIB partners will have custom versions from day one, the reference GTX 960 works at 1127MHz for the GPU base and 1178MHz for the GPU Boost clock, while 2GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 7.0GHz.

Nvidia describes the $199-priced Geforce GTX 960 as a "sweet spot" graphics card for 1080p gaming at 60fps and according to our own review, it should be able to deliver playable framerates in most games at decent levels of detail.