MSI GTX 950 GAMING 2G video card test: youngest

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 video card was introduced in August 2015. At the moment, this is the youngest video card in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX ninth series family. The GTX 950 is a slightly stripped-down version of the GTX 960. If you compare their characteristics, you will notice a slight difference in frequencies and a smaller number of computational pipelines (see comparison table).

 

 

The MSI GTX 950 GAMING 2G, presented in the review, as you might guess, is based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950. Like other video cards in the MSI GAMING series, it received a redesigned board and a proprietary TWIN FROZR V cooling system.

MSI traditionally provides GAMING graphics accelerators with higher frequencies than the reference ones, with some room for overclocking. The overclocking potential is not as great as in the MSI Overclocking series of video cards, but you can experiment with MSI GAMING devices.

 

 

The declared GPU frequency in Boost mode is 1317 MHz (reference frequency is 1188 MHz). According to measurements, the frequency rises even higher – up to 1392 MHz. Note that the situation when the video card operates at a frequency higher than the declared one is typical for modern NVIDIA video cards.

 

The cooling system used here is quite interesting. Heat pipes are responsible for efficient heat removal. Fans can rotate at different speeds, depending on the recorded temperature in different areas of the board.

 

It is quite expected that at low load the fans may stop completely. This is not a unique feature today. GeForce GTX ninth series video adapters from different vendors also have this capability. This became possible due to the high energy efficiency of the Maxwell 2.0 architecture on the basis of which these video cards are built.

 

Turning fans off and on depends on the GPU temperature. According to our observations, the MSI GTX 950 GAMING 2G turns on the fans when the temperature reaches 62 °C, and stops when it drops below 50 °C. These are quite high thresholds, which allows the video card to be in completely silent mode quite often.

 

Cooling is very efficient. In our conditions, when operating under load, the GPU temperature was around 61 °C.

 

 

MSI Gaming series devices also come with the proprietary MSI Gaming app. In this case, with its help you can, within small limits, shift the priorities of the video card towards performance or quiet operation, choosing one of the profiles: OC Mode, Gaming Mode, Silent Mode.

 

 

We don’t even know if it makes sense to make the video card even quieter, since in normal mode it won’t bother you with noise.

 

 

The application also allows you to monitor various system parameters (FPS, temperature, fan speed, voltage on various elements, GPU frequency, etc.) with the ability to display this data on top of the current image. This is convenient when experimenting with overclocking; the function is really interesting and useful.

 

 

Test platform configuration:

Processor	Intel Core i7-3770K
Motherboard	Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X
RAM capacity	4×2 GB DDR3 1333
Storage	SSD Adata S511 120 GB
Operating system	Windows 7 64 bit

 

Test histograms:

 

Sniper Elite V2 1920×1080 h. quality, fps

Metro: Last Light 1920×1080 h. quality, fps

Sleeping dogs 1920×1080 h. quality, fps

 

Tomb Raider 2013 1920×1080 h. quality, fps

Total War: Rome II 1920×1080 h. quality, fps

3DMark 11, Extreme scores

3DMark Cloud Gate (GPU Scores)

3DMark Fire Strike (GPU Scores)

System power consumption, W (less is better)

 

* — MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G video card — in March 2015. Accordingly, the performance results of these video adapters were obtained using driver versions that were current at the time of testing

 

The difference in speed with the older video card GTX 960 for the GTX 950 under study it turned out to be small. However, in terms of price, these video cards do not differ that much. In our opinion, it would be more appropriate if NVIDIA pushed the GTX 950 and GTX 960 further. These accelerators turned out to be very similar.

 

If we compare the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 with AMD-based solutions, then according to our results the GTX 950 loses AMD Radeon R9 380, but easily bypasses AMD Radeon R7 370. At the same time, AMD-based devices noticeably lose in terms of performance/power consumption ratio.

 

Separately, we decided to show histograms to compare performance within the line of video cards based on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9xx (for example, we took the game Sleeping dogs with 1920×1080 high quality settings). From model to model, performance increases unevenly. Between the GTX 960 and GTX970 you can notice a big step in speed

 

* — video cards The MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G and 980 GAMING 4G were tested in December 2014, and the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G was tested in March 2015. Accordingly, the performance results for these video adapters were obtained using the driver versions current at the time of testing

 

Conclusions

 

We wanted to find something significant that could be written down as a disadvantage of the MSI GTX 950 GAMING 2G, but it didn’t work out. 🙂 A good base in the form of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 received useful improvements from MSI, and as a result the MSI GTX 950 GAMING 4G turned out to be very attractive. We liked this video card.

 

MSI GTX 950 GAMING 2G Features

Video card model	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950
Interface	PCI Express 3.0 x16
Technical process	28 nm
Video memory	2 GB, GDDR5
Memory bus	128 bit
GPU frequency (boost frequency)	1127 (1317) MHz
Resulting memory frequency	6650 MHz
Outputs	HDMI, DVI, 3x DisplayPort
Supplier	MSI Representative
Price	$200

Rating:

+ increased GPU frequencies

+ interesting cooling system

+ low power consumption and heat dissipation

+ HDMI 2.0 support

 

Read also:

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  • Comparative test of video cards based on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
  • Video cards MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G, MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G. Maxwell‘s magic
  • Review of the Palit GeForce video card GTX 980 Super JetStream. Tuning GTX 980