Conclusion

First of all lets talk about prices. Let's consider that the two GTX 960 reference design together cost 390 Euro. Compare that to the 510 Euro you'd have to pay for the cheapest reference GTX 980 we can find. Therefore this one high-end card is significantly more expensive than the two mid-range models. To be precise the price difference is almost 31 percent.

To dive a bit deeper into the results, we start with performance differences in 3DMark graphics score where we see that one GTX 980 is 8 percent quicker in FireStrike Performance than two GTX 960 in SLI, 2 percent running FireStrike Extreme and 116 percent faster when executing FireStrike Ultra. In the next theoretical test we ran, Unigine Heaven High Preset, we see that the GTX 980 is on average 38 percent quicker in 1080p, 26 percent when running 1440p and 64 percent using our 2160p preset. In the case of games it turns out that the performance differences highly depend on the resolution combined with details level. In other words we see that the GTX 960's memory is the bottlenecking factor, since 2 Gigabyte are simply not enough for UHD with high levels of detail. When running 1080p resolution we see that the two 960s are faster in eight out of 13 games we have in our charts. In The Borderlands The Pre-Sequel the GTX 960 SLI is about 13 percent quicker than the single GTX 980 and Tomb Raider at 1080p shows the SLI setup is 15 percent ahead. A closer look at Assasin's Creed Unity shows the other end of the scale, where a single GTX 980 scores 47 percent better than the two GTX 960s and it's the same story when looking at Far Cry 4, where the difference is about 27 percent. In the case of GRID Autosport we find 37 percent and Sniper Elite 3 shows 25 pecent higher frame rates on the GTX 980 than on two GTX 960. Switching resolutions to 1440p and 2160p shows that the two GTX 960's actually struggle to provide enough frames per second in order to generate a smooth gaming experience. Especially at 2160p we see that the 2 Gigabyte GDDR5 memory on the GTX 960 cards is simply not enough to make games run at playable frame rates.  
 
Overall the two GTX 960 cards are performing really well and there is no doubt the two of them are quick. It's a pity there is not GTX 960 with 4 Gigabyte VRAM. Since it's rather clear that 2 Gigabyte GDDR5 memory is not enough to run 1440p or 2160p smoothly we would have been very curious to see how two GTX 960's with 4 Gigabyte VRAM each stacked up against one GTX 960 with the same amount of VRAM. Last but no least we also had a look at power consumption and we notice that two GTX 960's in SLI make our system burn 12 percent more power than one GTX 980 in Idle. Under load the difference shoots up to a whopping 62 percent. If you're about to spend roughly 390 Euros on two GTX 960's these days we'd recommend you to opt for one single GTX 970. Although frame rates will be lower at 1080p, especially with higher resolutions you will see a huge benefit since there is twice the VRAM. Apart from that, if you should have the funds, the GTX 980 is, without the shadow of a doubt, the most powerful graphics card money can buy today.

Page 1 - Test Setup	Page 11 - Thief
Page 2 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 12 - GRID Autosport
Page 3 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 13 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - Borderlands - The Pre-Sequel	Page 14 - Metro Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 4	Page 15 - Assassin’s Creed Unity
Page 6 - Watch Dogs	Page 16 - Far Cry 4
Page 7 - Tomb Raider	Page 17 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Sniper Elite 3	Page 6 - Prices
Page 9 - Crysis 3	Page 19 - Performance Index
Page 10 - Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare	Page 20 - Conclusion