Review: MSI GeForce GTX 950 Gaming and 2-way SLI

#5144926

Spets

2015-08-20 22:08

Powerful little card, jumps far up the ladder once overclocked.

#5144931

Darkest

2015-08-20 22:13

funny thing..we have some 950 more expensive than 960....well that's kinda wrong

I bought a couple of HD7950's over two years ago now for the same sort of money you can spend on some of the 960's. I get better performance in general, especially when factoring in my OC. I really don't know what's going on at the moment with the cost of the mid range segment. If I was buying in the price range of the 950's I'd probably look for a second hand 280/7900 series card.

#5144942

Supertribble

2015-08-20 22:31

That's actually normal behavior because at idle the fans do not spin anymore, the cards are passive and stay passive up-to roughly 60-65 Degrees C, then the fans will kick in.

My MSI 960s turn the fans off at idle and are currently idling at 26c. The hotter card is at 28c. 40 seems on the hot side imo but is still ok.

#5144953

Agonist

2015-08-20 23:16

I bought a couple of HD7950's over two years ago now for the same sort of money you can spend on some of the 960's. I get better performance in general, especially when factoring in my OC. I really don't know what's going on at the moment with the cost of the mid range segment. If I was buying in the price range of the 950's I'd probably look for a second hand 280/7900 series card.

Fully agreed on this. Last year I bought my 7950s for $125 each and they would oc to 1300 on core with AIO coolers. The mid range segment is crap price wise. Its strange, thats the butter usually for gpus. GT 750ti are still going for $125+ plus new or used. Thats why Id rather spend the extra $25 and just get a 950 for rig #2. The 960 isnt much better then my 4gb 670's let alone the 950.

#5144965

cowie

2015-08-20 23:59

This is probably the fun card of the year but $139.00 would be a better price. killer clocks that run pretty stable should be easy enough aT 1080p and its low power and cold running(if you set a fan profile)easy can make people happy all the way around.

#5145000

easy2007

2015-08-21 02:34

I recently bought two GTX 680's second hand which I have in SLI for £160 which is slight more than the price of one GTX 950.

#5145063

0blivious

2015-08-21 07:10

Seems like a solid card that performs very much like the GTX 760 I still have. The price is a bit steep for entry level gaming though. A quick scan of the local used cards shows me that I can get numerous video cards equal to or better than the 950 for $100-$120. (HD 7970, r9 285, gtx960, gtx770, etc) I think this should be priced closer to $120 USD and it would be a very tasty option for a budget gaming rig. I usually end up building 2 or 3 budget gamers per year (for friends or family). If I was building one now, I'd still opt for a used video card as nvidia is asking for too much.

#5145157

PNeV

2015-08-21 12:44

If an ITX sized card comes around it would be a good solution in an ITX build where the 750 Ti once occupied, being with it having no need for external power but more performance.

#5145174

Fox2232

2015-08-21 13:23

Card looks nice, till you realize it eats only 90W and it is still huge, and has additional power connector. With above properties, price is simply too high. Should have been micro card, and then price would be justified.

#5145287

waltc3

2015-08-21 16:44

In 1998 the Rivia 128 was released with 128bit memory bus, seventeen years later the Geforce 950 is released.... with 128bit bus? Really can't we move away from this?

I quite agree that anything with a 128-bit local bus should always be priced below $100...I wouldn't call this card "entry level" as much as I'd call it "N00b bait"...;) You can pair a decent GPU with a 128-bit bus & cripple it more effectively than laser-cutting it, imo. Probably cheaper, too. But I'd imagine that the same gpu on a 256-bit local bus would outperform 2 of these SLI'ed, with far fewer configuration hassles, too. Noticed that nV is still using physical SLI bridges...? Hmmm....It's going to be nice to see some D3d12 articles with examples of the dual-gpu improvements it is theoretically poised to deliver...I'm surprised, really, to see that neither AMD or nVidia has been forthcoming with their own D3d12/x-fire/sli demos!

#5145302

NomadAssassin

2015-08-21 17:16

I quite agree that anything with a 128-bit local bus should always be priced below $100...I wouldn't call this card "entry level" as much as I'd call it "N00b bait"...;) You can pair a decent GPU with a 128-bit bus & cripple it more effectively than laser-cutting it, imo. Probably cheaper, too. But I'd imagine that the same gpu on a 256-bit local bus would outperform 2 of these SLI'ed, with far fewer configuration hassles, too. Noticed that nV is still using physical SLI bridges...? Hmmm....It's going to be nice to see some D3d12 articles with examples of the dual-gpu improvements it is theoretically poised to deliver...I'm surprised, really, to see that neither AMD or nVidia has been forthcoming with their own D3d12/x-fire/sli demos!

You people fail to understand that it's 2015 and clock speeds in both CPU and GPU, memory speeds and bus wight means jack **** now days. It's the number cores and the architecture itself that gives the performance. It's not 2005 anymore. Idk what buses and bits you are dreaming about. With Pascal even the high end models might end up and 128bit. Might see mid ranged 64bit as well.

#5145305

Loophole35

2015-08-21 17:20

You people fail to understand that it's 2015 and clock speeds in both CPU and GPU, memory speeds and bus wight means jack **** now days. It's the number cores and the architecture itself that gives the performance. It's not 2005 anymore. Idk what buses and bits you are dreaming about. With Pascal even the high end models might end up and 128bit. Might see mid ranged 64bit as well.

You are not realizing it's the AMD shills in full attack mode. The only real problem I see with this card is it's priced $20 too high. That problem will sort itself out in a month or two.

#5145308

yasamoka

2015-08-21 17:25

Yeah I can't find a 290 for under $275 here, in fact I can't even find a used one for under $180. He makes a semi-decent point with a used 280x. You can get those for $150ish. Problem is the 280x is a 250w card compared to a 90w card. Doing quick in head math, in my state having the 950 saves about $10 a year. So after 2 years the 950 is actually the cheaper card. That being said it seems like the 280x is slightly faster (but it's also used so there is a trade off).

Slightly faster? The 280X is quite faster than the 960, let alone the 950. You're comparing two very different cards here.

#5145312

Denial

2015-08-21 17:35

Slightly faster? The 280X is quite faster than the 960, let alone the 950. You're comparing two very different cards here.

Ya, on second look it seems to be about 25-30% faster than a 950 (I did a quick google search when I posted that, no clue what I was looking at though). So probably a good decision to buy a used one considering you can get it for about $10-15 cheaper. That being said, I think this card is priced fine.

#5145697

rl66

2015-08-22 10:45

While I agree the price is rather high for this product series your argument makes no sense ? A 290 is 300 EURO, a 950 is ~175 EURO.

about the 290, the last piece were at 199 Euro during the summer sale... but it was during the sale and the 950 is, as the Fury line, outside the sale. so he was half right 🙂

#5145719

moab600

2015-08-22 12:05

NVIDIA low end cards were mostly crap, 950 960 are kinda meh, would rather buy second hand 770 or 780.

#5145721

Undying

2015-08-22 12:10

179€ for this? What a rip off in Nvidia style...

#5145954

sykozis

2015-08-23 01:38

You are not realizing it's the AMD shills in full attack mode. The only real problem I see with this card is it's priced $20 too high. That problem will sort itself out in a month or two.

I was thinking the same thing. A 128bit memory bus on a mid-range card really isn't a problem. NVidia's compression more than makes up for the smaller bus. If it was using a 64bit memory bus, I'd be a little concerned. If the card was priced around the $150 mark, I'd be looking to pick one up for folding just due to the low power consumption. That's one area I'd love to see Hilbert test. Folding performance. I don't game enough for 3D performance to mean anything and it's not indicative of folding performance.

#5145989

leszy

2015-08-23 05:01

The real problem is, that buying a cheap R7 card, people can pair it with a cheap FreeSync monitor (like 29UM67) and experience will be completely incomparable. For high-end cards owners, Adaptive-Sync is only an additional attraction. For low-fps cards it is a fundamental difference.

#5146214

Aura89

2015-08-23 22:17

An overpriced low end card = worthless. You can get a 2x more powerful, freesync supporting 290 with a warranty for this price. Or one from the piles of 280x`s or 7970`s out there for 2/3rds of this price. Hard to imagine people on a budget who ignore the used option.

I would never buy a used card, no matter if i was on a budget or not. I would never buy used electronics, too much risk.

In 1998 the Rivia 128 was released with 128bit memory bus, seventeen years later the Geforce 950 is released.... with 128bit bus? Really can't we move away from this?

So what you're trying to say is...the 950 has a 1.6GB/s speed? oh, wait that's incorrect...because the 950 has a 106GB/s speed, so what exactly are you spewing nonsense about? trying to compare the graphics card because of the bus? By that logic we should be upset that graphics cards/CPU's havn't increased in performance much for the last 10 years because the Mhz hasn't increased "that" much on average, without any regards to the technology behind it...