Gigabyte GTX 950 Xtreme Gaming 2 GB Review

Name: Gigabyte GTX 950 Xtreme Gaming 2 GB
Brand: GIGABYTE

W1zzard

on Sep 28th, 2015,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: GIGABYTE

(14 Comments) »

Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 950 was released a few weeks ago, covering the entry-level price-point at around $160, right below $200, where competition from AMD is strong.

NVIDIA gave the GeForce GTX 950 a solid and cost-effective foundation in the 28 nm GM206 silicon on which the GTX 960 is also based. This is a tiny chip, and compared to the R7 370, it has a narrower 128-bit memory bus for just four memory chips on the card. NVIDIA makes up for some of the deficit with lossless texture compression tech, which improves effective bandwidth by around 20%. The sheer pixel-crunching muscle of the Maxwell architecture takes care of the rest, which creates immense room for future cost-cutting measures.

Today, we are reviewing Gigabyte's tweaked up GTX 950 Xtreme Gaming, which is the company's flagship GTX 950 card. It comes with an overclock on both GPU and memory and has a backplate, all for $180.

GeForce GTX 950 Market Segment Analysis
	Radeon R9 370	Radeon R9 270X	GeForce GTX 950	Gigabyte GTX 950	GeForce GTX 760	GeForce GTX 960	Radeon R9 285	Radeon R9 380	GeForce GTX 770	Radeon R9 280X	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	Radeon R9 390	GeForce GTX 970
Shader Units	1024	1280	768	768	1152	1024	1792	1792	1536	2048	2304	2560	2560	1664
ROPs	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	48	64	64	56
Graphics Processor	Pitcairn	Pitcairn	GM206	GM206	GK104	GM206	Tonga	Tonga	GK104	Tahiti	GK110	Hawaii	Hawaii	GM204
Transistors	2800M	2800M	2940M	2940M	3500M	2940M	unknown	unknown	3500M	4310M	7100M	6200M	6200M	5200M
Memory Size	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	8192 MB	4096 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	128 bit	128 bit	256 bit	128 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	384 bit	384 bit	512 bit	512 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	975 MHz	1050 MHz	1024 MHz+	1114 MHz+	980 MHz+	1127 MHz+	918 MHz	970 MHz	1046 MHz+	1000 MHz	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1000 MHz	1051 MHz+
Memory Clock	1400 MHz	1400 MHz	1653 MHz	1750 MHz	1502 MHz	1753 MHz	1375 MHz	1375 MHz	1753 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1500 MHz	1750 MHz
Price	$150	$150	$160	$180	$210	$190	$200	$200	$300	$210	$290	$250	$330	$310

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Documentation
DVI adapter

The Card

Gigabyte is using an edgy cooler design with a dual-fan, dual-slot cooling solution. A backplate has been included as well. Dimensions of the card are 22.5 cm x 12.0 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include a DVI, a HDMI port, and three DisplayPorts.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 2.0 compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.