The official NVIDIA blog has announced that the GTX 950 is now available for purchase worldwide and retails for $159. While the 950 is less impressive than the other members of the 900 series, like the GTX 960, 970 and 980, it does offer a significant improvement over previous generations. NVIDIA claims that it offers 3 times the performance of the GTX 650. This chip may be a decent choice for people with old and outdated graphics cards, who simply want to upgrade to something more modern without breaking the bank. According to NVIDIA it can play most modern games at 1080p at 60fps.
A big part of NVIDIA's marketing is pushing the GTX 950 as the card of choice for MOBA players. For fast-paced online games, responsiveness is critical, and they claim the GTX 950 offers responsiveness that "only the pros used to afford." NVIDIA also touts the benefits of the GeForce Experience, which can be used in conjunction with the GTX 950 to further reduce latency. Nvidia claims that with proper optimization, response time can be cut in half.
Finally lets take a look at the GTX 950's specs.
CUDA Cores | 768 |
Base Clock | 1024Mhz |
Boost Clock | 1188Mhz |
Standard Memory Config | 2GB |
Memory Interface | GDDR5 |
Memory Interface Width | 128-bit |
Memory Bandwidth | 105.6 GB/sec |
NVIDIA has also announced upcoming features that will be added to GeForce Experience. The first, Gamestream Co-op, will allow you to stream games over the Internet to a friend and let them play cooperatively with you. Another change coming to GeForce Experience will add an in-game overlay to make it easier to record, stream to Twitch, and upload to YouTube. These features are not yet available, but will be tested out in an early access Beta next month.
Do you think that the GTX 950 is a worthwhile purchase for MOBA players, or is it just a marketing plot by NVIDIA? Leave your comments below.