Another Maxwell Iteration
NVIDIA’s latest GPU release is the budget bomb known as the GTX 950. This card offers a great 1080p gaming experience for users on a budget.
The mainstream end of the graphics card market is about to get a bit more complicated with today’s introduction of the GeForce GTX 950. Based on a slightly cut down GM206 chip, the same used in the GeForce GTX 960 that was released almost 8 months ago, the new GTX 950 will fill a gap in the product stack for NVIDIA, resting right at $160-170 MSRP. Until today that next-down spot from the GTX 960 was filled by the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, the very first iteration of Maxwell (we usually call it Maxwell 1) that came out in February of 2014!
Even though that is a long time to go without refreshing the GTX x50 part of the lineup, NVIDIA was likely hesitant to do so based on the overwhelming success of the GM107 for mainstream gaming. It was low cost, incredibly efficient and didn’t require any external power to run. That led us down the path of upgrading OEM PCs with GTX 750 Ti, an article and video that still gets hundreds of views and dozens of comments a week.
The GTX 950 has some pretty big shoes to fill. I can tell you right now that it uses more power than the GTX 750 Ti, and it requires a 6-pin power connector, but it does so while increasing gaming performance dramatically. The primary competition from AMD is the Radeon R7 370, a Pitcairn GPU that is long in the tooth and missing many of the features that Maxwell provides.
And NVIDIA is taking a secondary angle with the GTX 950 launch –targeting the MOBA players (DOTA 2 in particular) directly and aggressively. With the success of this style of game over the last several years, and the impressive $18M+ purse for the largest DOTA 2 tournament just behind us, there isn’t a better area of PC gaming to be going after today. But are the tweaks and changes to the card and software really going to make a difference for MOBA gamers or is it just marketing fluff?
Let’s dive into everything GeForce GTX 950!
GM206 Makes Another Appearance
As I mentioned above, the GeForce GTX 950 is based on the existing GM206 GPU found in the GTX 960 but with a slight reduction in compute hardware. Let’s take a look at the specifications table.
GTX 950 | GTX 960 | GTX 970 | GTX 980 | GTX 760 | GTX 770 | GTX 780 | GTX 660 | GTX 670 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GPU | GM206 | GM206 | GM204 | GM204 | GK104 | GK104 | GK110 | GK106 | GK104 |
GPU Cores | 768 | 1024 | 1664 | 2048 | 1152 | 1536 | 2304 | 960 | 1344 |
Rated Clock | 1024 MHz | 1126 MHz | 1050 MHz | 1126 MHz | 980 MHz | 1046 MHz | 863 MHz | 980 MHz | 915 MHz |
Texture Units | 48 | 64 | 104 | 128 | 96 | 128 | 192 | 80 | 112 |
ROP Units | 32 | 32 | 64 | 64 | 32 | 32 | 48 | 24 | 32 |
Memory | 2GB | 2GB | 4GB | 4GB | 2GB | 2GB | 3GB | 2GB | 2GB |
Memory Clock | 6600 MHz | 7000 MHz | 7000 MHz | 7000 MHz | 6000 MHz | 7000 MHz | 6000 MHz | 6000 MHz | 6000 MHz |
Memory Interface | 128-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit |
Memory Bandwidth | 105.6 GB/s | 112 GB/s | 224 GB/s | 224 GB/s | 192 GB/s | 224 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 144 GB/s | 192 GB/s |
TDP | 90 watts | 120 watts | 145 watts | 165 watts | 170 watts | 230 watts | 250 watts | 140 watts | 170 watts |
Peak Compute | 1.57 TFLOPS | 2.30 TFLOPS | 3.49 TFLOPS | 4.61 TFLOPS | 2.25 TFLOPS | 3.21 TFLOPS | 3.97 TFLOPS | 1.81 TFLOPS | 2.46 TFLOPS |
Transistor Count | 2.94B | 2.94B | 5.2B | 5.2B | 3.54B | 3.54B | 7.08B | 2.54B | 3.54B |
Process Tech | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
MSRP | $159 | $199 | $329 | $549 | $249 | $399 | $649 | $230 | $399 |
The GTX 950 drops the GM206 from 1024 CUDA cores to 768, a decrease of 33%, along with the texture unit count. The memory configuration remains unchanged with a 128-bit memory bus, 32 ROPs and 2GB of GDDR5 memory. That memory does run a bit slower, 6.6 GHz rather than 7.0 GHz, and thus the memory bandwidth is lower as well hitting 105.6 GB/s compared to the GTX 960 reaching 112 GB/s.
Base clock speed is set at 1024 MHz with a typical boost clock of 1188 MHz. In reality we saw much higher than that in our gaming tests and we have cards from ASUS, EVGA and Zotac that come with further overclocks straight out of the box.
That decrease in core count and clock speed help NVIDIA keep the TDP at just 90 watts for the GTX 950, a fantastic number for a mainstream product but that still requires the use of a 6-pin power connector. The GTX 750 Ti used the lack of external power requirements as a huge selling feature but the GTX 950 won’t offer that – the good news for NVIDIA and GeForce fans is that the GTX 750 Ti will continue as part of the overall product portfolio. The GTX 950 is not replacing the GTX 750 Ti.
With an MSRP of $159, the GTX 950 finds itself directly between the updated GTX 750 Ti pricing (now as low as $99 before rebates) and the GTX 960 (selling for $180-190). That price will adjust as stock starts to enter the market and from what we are hearing this is going to be a hard launch with plenty of stock available starting today. NVIDIA believes that the GTX 950 is really a replacement for the GTX 650, even going so far as including one in the box with our GTX 950 sample as a comparison point. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to compare it to it directly but it’s likely something we will get to with further testing in the coming days.
From the AMD side of things the “new” Radeon R7 370 is the best option to combat this new NVIDIA product. With a price tag of ~$175 but based on the aging Pitcairn GPU, the R7 370 also requires just a single power connector.
Wonder how my 2012 era GTX
Wonder how my 2012 era GTX 660Ti compares in performance to these new cards……
Yo! eh Yo yo! Know what i’m
Yo! eh Yo yo! Know what i’m sayin! I got one for free from a Nvidia BOSS I party with yo yo! Yeah! So I did not have to pay 4 shiz! And you do! But check it yo! I does it big with my 980 Ti I gots 4 free at the same party yo! Yeah! YO! YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO!
The generosity must have been
The generosity must have been prompted by your contribution to the english language.
Small correction.
“The GTX
Small correction.
“The GTX 950 drops the GM206 from 1024 CUDA cores to 768, a decrease of 33%”
768 is 3/4 of 1024. So going from 4 to 3 is a decrease of 25%. From 3 to 4 (768 to 1024) would be an increase of 33%.
Why was the 4GB version of
Why was the 4GB version of the 370 tested as opposed to the 2GB version? The price point that you are showing for the 4GB version is probably where the 370X with 2 GB will be sitting and it will probably perform at a level above the 950 to make it worthy of that price point. Just saying.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-co
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Discrete-GPU-Market.png
Another nail in the coffin for AMD it seems. They’re finished.
Ah, no. Not once DX12 picks
Ah, no. Not once DX12 picks up some steam. AMD CPUs and GPUs are dramatically boosted by that API. People are in for a rude awakening once they see how much faster Radeons are in DX12. They’re probably gonna be pretty annoyed that they forked out for nVidia cards just in time to see them performing equally or even slower than AMD cards that were supposedly inferior.
Where are the DX12
Where are the DX12 benchmarks? Anyone buying a new graphics card at this point deserves to know how much faster Radeon cards are in DX12 compared to nVidia. Buying on the basis of DX11 alone is extremely misleading, and will lead to tremendous resentment.
I agree, DX11 is on its way
I agree, DX11 is on its way out. Anyone who buys a card now will probably keep it for the next 1-3 years. DX12 benchmarks are very relevant with this in mind.
There are only benchmarks
There are only benchmarks available though. That’s not going to give you any sort of idea of what that’s going to translate to in FPS for any given game.
Planing for future growth isn’t a bad idea, but I’d imagine anyone buying one of these plans to use it today, and showcasing what it can do with today’s software makes a heck of a lot more sense. DX12 seems to show minor improvements all around. At most you can expect games to perform marginally better down the road.
I agree, DX11 is on its way
I agree, DX11 is on its way out. Anyone who buys a card now will probably keep it for the next 1-3 years. DX12 benchmarks are very relevant with this in mind.
“A slightly cut down GM206
“A slightly cut down GM206 allows NVIDIA to take better advantage of its supply pipeline”
My translation-Allows Nvidia to utilize broken 960 dies.
AMD has me really confused at the moment-We had
270X full die-270 cut down/broken die
280X full die-280 cut down/broken die
Where are the 370X and 380X-Are we only getting
broken/cut down dies?????????????????????
Jeez…for +$20 I’ll get the
Jeez…for +$20 I’ll get the 960