Sorry, but you tell nonsense. GTX 960 is not a low end card, but middle range graphic card. R9 380 Performance: 3DMark GPU Score: 11830, 190W. GTX 960 Performance: 3DMark GPU Score: 10370, 120W.
Only one mobile graphics card is better, the GTX 980M, 3DMark GPU Score: 11840.
http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GTX+960/review
Compatibility is important, but not everything. Meanwhile, the CS compatibility is better (GPU off in Illustrator, and everything is OK). So in the end it's not worth it.
1. Sorry, you try to prove yourself with Windows based benchmark.
2. 3DMark 11 is known as its always on NVIDIA side not real world gaming, but still, all this is out of Mackintosh/Hackintosh area.
3. Guy says from his own experience (R9 380 got 4 points behind GTX 980ti in OS X Cinebench), do you know the difference between 980ti and 960 on this particular OS X benchmark?
4. The whole point here is to build as close as possible to a real mackintosh machine to get the benefits from wonderful applications made by Apple which always prefer AMD OpenCL over NVIDIA OpenGL.. (No gaming here, no 3DMark).
5. OS X can use from NVIDIA cards that CUDA cores to speed up video render and applied effects in some apps like those from Adobe, CUDA of NVIDIA is Shading Units on AMD, GTX 960 has 1024 CUDA cores and R9 380 has 1792 Shading Units, for OS X thats what makes some laptop GPUs even faster then GTX 960 because my old laptop GTX 680m had 1344 CUDA cores (again, for OS X its about CUDA computing or AMD OpenCL, not Windows 3DMark benchmark).
6. Guy said he swapped 980ti for R9 380 and you were there to bring a GTX 960, is that fair? Who tells (nonsense)?
7. I still consider the 960 low end card for 9 series cards because for now it goes like this: Titan X, 980ti, 980, 970,
960, 950.
Short: Please on OS X communication forget anything about 3DMark/gaming/windows because you give no point, and yes, compatibility and OpenCL are everything because Apple macs prefer OpenCL and our Hackintoshs prefer compatibility and OpenCL, AMD always wins on OpenCL, OpenGL of NVIDIA means nothing for OS X, but NVIDIA can be there a little bit with CUDA cores.
With all tat said, for OS X and NVIDIA the amount of CUDA cores matters, not Windows 3DMark.
A friendly advice, switch to a compatible AMD card if you need to bring good performance to your Hackintosh.