Not long ago my RTX 3090 didn’t survive a power circuit problem. Local service told me it will take from one to two weeks only to find out is the card even fixable. I still wanted to play games so I searched for a cheap replacement. Requirements were simple – at least 4 GB of VRAM, support for modern version of DirectX and Vulkan. Support for 4k 60 FPS.
GTX 900 series is generous in terms of memory, starting with 960 and to 980 all of them have 4GB of VRAM. The price starts at 20 dollars and goes up. I decided to go with 960 specifically because I found an option made by legendary EVGA and to save 10 dollars on top of it.
Well, you can play surprisingly a lot of games with this videocard!
Limitations
I want to start with what I’m personally missing with this one. I have 4k display with 160hz refresh rate from LC-Power and support for such resolutions and refresh rates appeared in NVidia GPUs only starting with RTX 3000 series.
Steam surveys show that more than 50% of players are still using Full HD. Half as many people are currently playing in 2k resolution so adoption of 4k is going very slowly. I’m a minority over here.
Obviously you won’t get ray tracing if you care. I personally don’t. Even RTX 3090 I needed exclusively for productivity that 24GB RAM provides for some software like Blender.
You won’t have DLSS, but using FSR 3 up-scaling in supported games is possible.
Real GTX 960 experience
All 2D games like Terraria are obviously working great. Not like there were any doubts. In synthetic tests GTX 960 is only 5 times slower than 3090. In practice difference is obviously bigger.
Full HD resolution has 4 times lower density of pixels than 4k so it means that lower pixel fill rate is compensated by 4 times lower resolution. In other words according to the difference in resolutions the gap is not as significant as it sounds.
Before we start I need to mention the relevant spec for the rest of my system – Intel i7 13700k and 32 GB DDR5. If you go with cheaper components your numbers might be slightly lower because of the rest of the system.
Let’s start with some not so demanding titles.
Valheim works close to 60 FPS on medium settings. It may go lower during battles, have rare shutters, but overall pretty comfortable experience.
What about more recent indie releases? System Shock Remastered powered by Unreal Engine gives you stable 60 fps without any stutters and problems. Game looks very nice and visually deep, that’s for sure a very well optimized title. Such games will work perfectly on GTX 960.
I played Bubsy 4D as well – a more recent game published by Atari SA. And completed it fully using GTX 960. It runs smoothly at 60 FPS without any stutters or lags. Loadings are fast. Read my article about this game.
You will for certain have games to play. Especially indie games. Since multiplayer games like Fortnight or World of Tanks are well optimized they will work well for sure.
Time to pick something less optimized and more demanding. How about 7 Days to die? This game doesn’t work perfectly even on RTX 3090. Trust me, I have hundreds of hours in it.
Again, you can play it at 60 FPS if set medium shadows quality and high quality for textures, with up-scaling turned off (The game suggests to use FSR 3 so in theory you can go with higher resolutions). The game is comfortable to play.
Experience with No Man Sky appeared to be worse. That’s where the magic ended. FPS stayed between 30 and 50 with V-Sync enabled. Game is playable but not as pleasant as previous games. I set lowest settings for this test (still looked better than 7 Days to die). GTX 980 should be comfortable with this one, but not GTX 960. Not so comfortable to play.
I have no desire to install Cyberpunk 2077 cause I have no free 60 GB of SSD space at the moment and I can tell you without even testing it – Cyberpunk 2077 will be worse experience than No Man Sky, barely playable on GTX 960 and tests of other people suggest it. Besides for Cyberpunk 2077 you might need to invest more into other components of your system.
Build to play Cyberpunk 2077 comfortably is a different story.
GTX 980 would be much a better choice. In synthetic tests it is almost twice faster than GTX 960. Overall GTX 980 would be much better choice for a cheap build – I just saved 10 dollars, cause the card is temporary.
It’s nice to have something like GTX 960 or GTX 980 in your closet in case if something goes wrong with your main build.
Conclusion
I was personally surprised about how capable is GTX 960 to this day, in 2026. Back in the days NVidia produced real bangers. You will definitely find something to play with such build.
If you’re choosing a cheap videocard for your system GTX 960 and especially GTX 980 are still very much usable. Yes, you won’t be able to play on high settings and some really demanding games might not be comfortable to play, but you will still be able to enjoy many games.
Prices for GTX 1000 series is somehow still noticeably higher than GTX 900 series even to this day. Relatively to it GTX 900 series is dirt cheap. If you need to build a low cost computer for your brother or want a secondary PC at your living room it’s a good deal.