There’s no doubting that big, meaty graphics cards do fairly well in the PC gaming hardware market. Far from definitive, Steam’s Hardware Survey suggests quite a number of high-end GPUs being used.

That said, the real money is made off of lower-end cards. They’re cards that manage 1080p resolution just fine, and that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

To that effect, NVIDIA has launched their latest entry-level card, the GTX 950. It’s a good performer, to be sure, but makes little sense in the South African market.

Spec wise, it uses a cut-down GM206, the same GPU that powers the GTX 960. On paper, and when testing benchmarks in a vacuum, it’s a real beaut.

NVIDIA GPU Specification Comparison
	GTX 960	GTX 950	GTX 750 Ti	GTX 650 Ti
CUDA Cores	1024	768	640	768
Texture Units	64	48	40	64
ROPs	32	32	16	16
Core Clock	1126MHz	1024MHz	1020MHz	925MHz
Boost Clock	1178MHz	1188MHz	1085MHz	N/A
Memory Clock	7GHz GDDR5	6.6GHz GDDR5	5.4GHz GDDR5	5.4GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
VRAM	2GB	2GB	2GB	1GB
FP64	1/32 FP32	1/32 FP32	1/32 FP32	1/24 FP32
TDP	120W	90W	60W	110W
Architecture	Maxwell 2	Maxwell 2	Maxwell 1	Kepler
GPU	GM206	GM206	GM107	GK106
Transistor Count	2.94B	2.94B	1.87B	2.54B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm
Launch Date	01/22/15	08/20/15	02/18/14	10/09/12
Launch Price	$199	$159	$149	$149

*Table courtesy of Anandtech.

It’s those specs that has the world excited by the launch of what is actually a relatively middling graphics card.

Here’s where things go a little awry for the GTX 950 in South Africa.

The GTX 960’s international retail price is $199 (R2, 637.37 at the time of writing) and the GTX 950 comes in at $159 (R2, 107.24 at the time of writing), a difference of approximately R500.

Of course, local inflation hikes those prices up, moving both cards to around the R3, 000 mark.

The cheapest available GTX 950, for example, is the MSI GTX 950 Overclocked Edition. It’s available at Evetech for a reasonable R2, 833.95, though pre-ordering it now will drop it down to R2, 699.

RebelTech, on the other hand, has the EVGA GTX 950 Superclocked Edition for R2, 934. Not bad.

Unfortunately, good as those prices may be, it does not put them R500 below the GTX 960.

In fact, RebelTech’s Galax GTX 960 Exoc is a mere R165 more, at R3, 099.

Only if you factor in the pre-order price of the MSI card from Evetech will you come close to that elusive R500 gap.

The question is then, is it worth paying R200 odd more for the GTX 960? Absolutely.

Here are some of the earliest benchmarks thus far.

GTX 960 vs GTX 950 Benchmark Comparison – Average Frames Per Second.
	GTX 960 (1080p/1440p)	GTX 950 (1080p/1440p)
Far Cry 4 – Ultra Settings	46/29	39/25
Shadow of Mordor – Ultra Settings	40/26	40/25
Bioshock Infinite – Ultra Settings	94/59	93/58
Metro: Last Light – Ultra Settings	51/35	47/31
Battlefield 4 – Ultra Settings	51/32	43/29
Crysis 3 – Ultra Settings	38/21	31/20

*Benchmark scores courtesy of Ars Technica.

Granted, some of the GTX 950s scores come reasonably close to that of the GTX 960, but in many other cases it’s no contest.

We’re talking about 1080p here. We wouldn’t recommend 1440p for either card, minus a select few games. Less than 30 fps really isn’t going to be an ideal experience.

The thing we want you to keep in mind is that these are the average frames per second, gained over the sum of 3 separate tests. That means that while both cards will encounter lower frames than the ones listed above, a good deal more of the GTX 960’s will be above 40 fps, rather than 30 fps for the GTX 950.

Moreover, when you consider that the GTX 950 uses a cut-down GTX 960, and so the very same microarchitecture, both will struggle in the very same graphically intensive scenarios. You will want the extra grunt of the GTX 960 to reduce the regularity of it, and mitigate the effect wherever possible.

For slightly less than R200, it’s worth it.

We’re willing to bet that cheaper GTX 950s will arrive, but they are unlikely to beat Evetech’s pre-order special for at least the next few months.

In fact, with a TDP of 90W, the GTX 950 will require a single six-pin power connector, much like the GTX 960. So it will require almost the exact same rig as the GTX 960.

We won’t argue that the GTX 950 isn’t cheaper. It’s that price difference, particularly in the international market, that NVIDIA is betting on securing it as the favoured card of PC gamers shooting for 1080p.

After all, according to surveys like Steam’s Hardware Survey, 1920 x 1080 is still the most popular gaming resolution.

But when you factor in future proofing, average frame rates, average price after inflation and TDP requirements, the GTX 960 is a better all-round card – at least in South Africa.

It may not have impressed as much as the GTX 950 is internationally, but we’ve got to consider local needs and preferences.

Our recommendation: if you’re coming from the likes of a GTX 650 or GTX 750 Ti, we would recommend that GTX 960. And shoot for the 4GB card if you can.

However, if you absolutely have to spend under R3, 000 on a graphics card, we would be only too happy to recommend the GTX 950. It’s just a tad more expensive than AMD’s equivalent, the R7 370, but it’s quite a bit faster.

On the flipside, if you’re looking to spend just a little more than the price of the average GTX 960, we would recommend the R9 380.

So there you have it R7 370 < GTX 950 < GTX 960 < R9 380. Get either of the latter two.

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