Today NVIDIA are launching their latest mainstream GPU which looks to take on the Radeon 370 and offer excellent 1080p gaming. NVIDIA have also given some of the features a real eSports/MOBA focus... so if you are a DOTA, LoL or Heroes of the Storm player then you'll want to read about the GeForce GTX 950…

GeForce GTX 950 Review - What is the 950 and what are these eSports features?

The GeForce GTX 950 is based on NVIDIAs Maxwell GPU, that’s the chip which also features on the likes of the GTX 980. The code name of this version of the chip is GM206 and it supports the latest DirectX 12 API. All of the other standard NVIDIA features such as CUDA, Dynamic Super Resolution, 3D Vision, SLI, G-Sync, MFAA are all supported too.

NVIDIA have also upgraded their video engine within the GTX 950 adding support for H.265 (HEVC) encode and decode. The GPU also supports up to four displays at 5K resolution.

For most gamers, framerate is key... and the GTX 950 those moving from a GTX 650 will see around 3x the performance which is great. Every little thing counts though when it comes to competitive gaming and this is something NVIDIA have looked to address with the GTX 950. As the above graph shows, the GTX 950 will cut response time in DOTA 2 almost in half, 80ms down to 45ms.

How does this happen? On the standard/older render path the game creates a frame and then sends it on to DirectX where there are two layers of processing which include the API and driver before the render takes place on the GPU/Screen. This takes 80ms. With GTX 950 NVIDIA have optimised this process firstly through reducing the frametime (higher performance=lower frame time) and secondly they reduce the number of pre-rendered frames to 1. By removing that second stage (DX2) the frame gets produced faster, 45ms in this case. In summary, as NVIDIA put it, "higher performance leads to a faster pipeline, and a pre-rendered limit leads to less latency."

GeForce GTX 950 Review - Performance

Testing was performed on the Intel Core i7-5960X running on an X99 board with 16GB of DDR4 and a Samsung 850 Pro SSD. Windows 10 was the OS and all games along with the OS were patched.

All testing was performed on a BenQ BL3201 4k Display at 1080p

NVIDIA Driver: 355.65 AMD Driver: 15.7.1

NOTE: We have marked the Radeon comparison below with 265/370 OC. Those two cards share the same architecture and essentially identical performance at the same clock speeds. The same can be said of the Radeon 7850 which also uses the same GPU config, however that was left out of the chart for size reasons. The GPU was clocked at 1050/5600Mhz and is the 2Gb model.

GeForce GTX 950 Review - Conclusion

Something we haven't touched on today, though will likely revisit, is the soon to be released, updated version of GeForce Experience which will include some crazy cool features such as the ability to stream your game to a friend (they use Chrome), invite them and have them join and play with you. That new version also includes an updated overlay for Instant Replay, Recording, Broadcasting (Twitch) and the ability to trim and upload videos to Youtube (4k/60fps) without needing to leave the game.

Turning back to the GTX 950 and looking at performance the obvious comparison to start with is the Radeon 370 (or 265/7850 as it was once known). In our testing the GTX 950 was, more often than not, faster than the Radeon 370. There were some engines where it was close, for example DOTA 2 Reborn, where the results were close but others where the GTX 950 had a clear win, such as Heroes of the Storm. The cards, in the configurations tested today, offered similar power draw when gaming and it was great to see that the trend of silent operation in desktop use has continued. All of the GTX 950s we tested turn off their fans when not gaming.

Summary: It is great to see NVIDIA continuing to evolve their eco-system, not just focusing on FPS. The GTX 950 can game at 1920x1080 with high levels of visual quality in the latest MOBAs, but aspects such as improvements in latency, the inclusion of HDMI 2.0 (4k @ 60fps) and the ever improving GeForce Experience are what makes it really stand out from the competition.

To read the full review, including a detailed look at the 4 GTX 950s and benchmarks such as GTA V, check out our sister site HardwareHeaven. http://www.hardwareheaven.com/content/reviews/graphics-cards/60076/geforce-gtx-950-review