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On paper, the GTX 950 doesn't look like a hugely enticing proposition - it's a cut-down version of an existing product and it's clearly aimed at the more value-conscious gamer, with performance to match. Indeed, it seems to exist mostly to nullify a tiny niche occupied by AMD's new R7 370. And yet, we rather like assessing the budget cards like this. Reviewing the latest and greatest is all about seeing how fast they are, but at the lower end of the spectrum, it's all about experimenting, tweaking settings, seeing just how much you can get away with in pursuit of great visuals and decent performance. In this respect, the GTX 950 doesn't disappoint.That said, the cutbacks do look significant. Nvidia's existing GTX 960 was a good product, but not a great one - the GTX 950 uses the same GM206 processor, with a 25 per cent reduction in CUDA core count, dropping down from the maximum 1024 shaders to just 768. Mitigating matters are tweaks to the core and boost clocks, meaning higher frequencies are in play. On top of that, while there is a reference spec, most of the GTX 950s on the market receive custom designs and factory overclocks.
To get an idea of how this plays out in the real world, we acquired three MSI Gaming cards - the GTX 950, the GTX 960 and the Radeon R7 370 - each with their own factory overclocks in play. We also brought in two additional budget cards from the lower price-tier, both of those running at reference speeds: the Radeon R7 360 and the classic GTX 750 Ti. As things stand, the new GTX 950 replaces the 750 Ti (though it does see a price bump) while the older card drops below £100 to take on the R7 360 - something it does pretty well.
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