We’ve told you before that Nvidia has an absolute stranglehold on the GPU market, with – at least until AMD’s release of its R9 300 series cards and its HBM-toting Fury series – a 76% market share. Even with the Fury and the Fury X now released, Nvidia is still coming out on top. There is one GPU market where Nvidia falters though – in the entry level. And it’s something they’re looking to rectify with the impending GeForce GTX 950.
Likely to be the last of this generation of Maxwell cards before Nvidia utilises stacked memory themselves in the upcoming Pascal cards, the 950 is the company’s first real sub-$200 cards since the GeForce GTX 750 and GeForce GTX 750 Ti. Though we’ve known about it for months, the 950 has yet to be officially unveiled – but according to VideocardZ and Hexus, the card should be launching soon – with pictures of some cards from Nvidia’s partners starting to leak all over the internet. Here’s the PNY one:
there’s even an ASUS Strix one, which for some unfathomable reason will likely cost as much as a GTX 960, which would be a better option.
The specifications of the card , likewise, haven’t been officially unveiled, but it will apparently be built on the Maxwell GM206 Core, featuring six SMM units that house 768 CUDA Cores. You’ll get 48 texture mapping units and 32 ROPs, running with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM on a 128bit-wide bus, giving you around 112.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. Expect core clock speeds of between 1150 and 1250 MHz – though, like other cards in the Maxwell family, should prove to be an excellent overclocking option.
For pure comparison’s sake, the GTX 750 Ti has 640 CUDA cores, 40 TMUs, and 16 ROPs, while the GTX 960 has 1,024 CUDA cores, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs so you can expect performance to sit somewhere neatly in the middle. The card looks to be a proper successor to the 750Ti, which should make it perfect for HTCPs and little console-like computers.
While it won’t give you 1080p performance on high settings in the latest and greatest in visually-demanding games, it should be rather suitable for the sort of gamer who does little more than play Dota 2, League of Legends or Counter-Strike: Go.
Last Updated: August 12, 2015
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 13:33
Still waiting for Pascal, thanks
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 13:51
I prefer Turbo Pascal.
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:02
At first I was amazed that you could even count. Then I remembered – that’s what you use Turbo Pascal for.
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 14:23
Yeah. The post coital math instruction I get from your mom is bearing fruit…
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:31
No matter how you phrase it, “your mom” jokes are not, and were never funny, intelligent or particularly burntastic. Unless you’re 10. Then they’re burns. Until you turn 11 and realise they’re not.
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 14:33
Ooooh! Touched a nerve did I? Meh. I am too tired to come up with original insults today. I really am just a sad little man with a tiny penis who cannot let go of the crush he had on his best friend’s mom circa 1985.
WitWolfy
August 12, 2015 at 13:53
Entry level card is entry level… It’s probably 1.5x better than the GTX 650, at BEST!
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 13:55
But can it run Crysis 1? At ultra?
Matthew Holliday
August 12, 2015 at 14:02
“The card looks to be a proper successor to the 750Ti”
“it won’t give you 1080p performance on high settings in the latest and greatest in visually-demanding games”
the 750ti played all the latest and greatest games on high @ 1080p.
so did the 650ti, 550ti and 450ti.
hell, even the 850M played games on high.
that a 200$/R3000 card wont play games on high is just sad.
not to mention that the 550ti was R1500 and the 750ti was R2000.
FoxOneZA
August 12, 2015 at 15:32
I guess people that never own the ’50ti series will never believe how much performance those little cards can chuck out.
Matthew Holliday
August 12, 2015 at 16:39
could chuck out.
past tense.
i dont think the new 950ti will be able to pull it off.
i have a 970 and im still dropping settings. games nowadays are way too badly optimised.
JGabriel
August 14, 2015 at 20:40
Matthew Holliday:
The most demanding games in 2015 (c.f. Shadows of Mordor or Assassin’s Creed Unity) can take more than 2GB of RAM to run optimally at 1080p, and that will only become more common going forward. I believe that’s where the author believes the 950 may fall short (as might the x50ti’s of earlier generations). The 128 bit bus is potentially an issue too. Hell, even a GTX 960 can’t reach 20fps at high settings on AC Unity, and a GTX 970 (a 4GB card, mind you) will just barely crack 30 fps – granted, that’s largely due to bugs and lack of optimization, but still.
That said, the author may be underestimating the ability of NVidia’s color compression scheme to maintain efficiency on a 2GB card up to about 2.5GB of textures, give or take 10%.
Matthew Holliday
August 17, 2015 at 09:59
i dont understand why it has to fall short though, games are getting more intense on resource usage, id thought it was only logical that graphics cards would scale in the same manner, keeping the cost : performance ration consistant.
the 950/950ti SHOULD be the best budget graphics card, allowing you to paly games on high for atleast a short period of time. if a graphics card is irrelevant at release, what is the point of releasing it?
at the rate graphics cards are going, PC gaming just isnt feesable.
about AC unity, thats false, i went back to play some more unity this weekend with my 970, and was cracking 90fps on high @ 1080 with vsync on.
the latest patches and driver updates have done wonders to the games performance.
granted the game still feels stale, but thats not a performance issue.
Ottokie
August 12, 2015 at 14:19
60 fps on Sudoku… awww jiss!
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:22
For the low price of $4.99 a month, you can get 60fps on Solitaire too!
Ottokie
August 12, 2015 at 14:24
Rather not push this poor thing to its limit
Nikola
August 12, 2015 at 14:24
and they say console gaming is expensive geez..
Viking Of Science
August 12, 2015 at 14:27
To Avoid Argument in future, just accept the following Truths:
1. YES, PC hardware is More Expensive than a Console
2. BUT, games on PC are cheaper at launch, and drop in price often due to Digital distributor sales….
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:28
Also – backwards compatibility is much more frequent.
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 14:29
Yes. Because we all replay Quake 2 from time to time.
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:30
Actually, we do. There’s an entire, successful website based on just this. GoG.com
Matthew Holliday
August 12, 2015 at 16:40
no, but if we missed out on witcher 1 and 2 and wanted to catch up for witcher 3, we dont have to buy a new PC to play them.
Viking Of Science
August 12, 2015 at 14:45
It’s not even called “backwards compatibility” It’s called GOG.com…
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:47
I take it you didn’t finish reading the line of comments? 😛
Viking Of Science
August 12, 2015 at 15:35
We’re on the wavelength it seems… also, comments didn’t update until after i posted….
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 15:44
BAH. Disqus, sort your shit out. 😛
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 14:28
3. The average upgrade cycle for a decent PC is 3 years
Pariah
August 12, 2015 at 14:29
If you a) have the money to waste and b) want to run everything at ultra while using a 4k monitor.
Otherwise, a decent PC will last 5 years with minor tweaks after 3 if you’d like to keep things at high.
Viking Of Science
August 12, 2015 at 14:45
It Used to be, but many people on this site can attest to their hardware being 4 years + old, and still able to keep up….
Dutch Matrix
August 12, 2015 at 14:55
In fact, I am one of them. Bought a mid range PC about 4 years ago and I can still play most games. Fine, not as gorgeous as a PS4 or high end PC, but still playable. Just giving ole Pariah what for.
BestJinjo
August 13, 2015 at 05:08
Yup, i5 2500K/2600K rigs overclocked to 4.5-5Ghz are still perfectly viable for GTX980TI/Fury X. Sure there might be 15-20% higher performance in games at 1080P with Skylake but the minute you turn on anti-aliasing/DSR/VSR and up details to Ultra, you are usually 95% GPU bottlenecked unless playing very CPU limited games like WOW or need that extra 20 fps to go from 120-> 140 on a 144Hz monitor. I am sitting on a 2560×1440 monitor so I am 99% GPU limited. Might use Sandy Bridge until Skylake-E or even Icelake in 2018 and just keep upgrading my GPU 🙂
Matthew Holliday
August 12, 2015 at 16:44
think about it this way, you can build yourself a PC for less than the cost of 10 AAA console games.
how many games do you currently have on your Steam library/backlog?
Steven Edgell
August 17, 2015 at 03:06
i feel they do not give entry level cards enough credit i use a 750 ti and it still is pretty capable for a card that’s “older”