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NVIDIA Launches $159 Mainstream Maxwell-Based GeForce GTX 950
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA is launching a new mainstream graphics card today, the GeForce GTX 950, based on the company's GM206 GPU. The GM206 debuted on the GeForce GTX 960, which launched a few months back. As the new card's name suggests though, the GM206 used on the GeForce GTX 950 isn't quite as powerful as the one used on the GTX 960. The company is targeting this card at MOBA (massive online battle arena) players, who don't necessarily need the most powerful GPUs on the market, but want smooth, consistent framerates at resolutions of 1080p or below. It's being positioned as a significant, yet affordable, upgrade over cards like the GeForce GTX 650 Ti, that are a couple of generations old. NVIDIA's reference specifications for the GeForce GTX 950 call for a base clock of 1024MHz and a Boost clock of 1188MHz. The GPU is packing 768 CUDA cores, 48 texture units, and 32 ROPs. The 2GB of video memory on GeForce GTX 950 cards is clocked at a 6.6GHz (effective GDDR5 data rate) and the memory links to the GPU via a 128-bit interface. At those clocks, the GeForce GTX 950 offers up a peak textured fillrate of 49.2 GTexels/s and 105.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth. At a $159 starting MSRP, in the benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 950 offers solid entry level or midrange performance at 1080p resolutions. It's a bit faster than AMD's Radeon R9 270X but comes in just behind a Radeon R9 285.
I'll wait five years to pick up this card for $50 and buy this year's video games for $5 each on Steam.
If this is targeted at MOBA players, then it is probably overkill. I've got a 2011 Mac Pro with a Radeon 5870 (850Mhz GPU, 1GB VRAM). Playing League of Legends at 1920x1200, 60fps is no problem for this setup. These games are not graphically intensive, nor do they require much CPU horsepower. If you are going to drop money on hardware for MOBA gaming, spend it on a nice keyboard/mouse and the lowest latency ISP you can find. If your machine is less than 5 years old, whatever came stock is more than enough to play the game.
I think the number on my card is 970. This is 950. Are smaller numbers better than bigger numbers?
For your wallet, in general yes. Also for your power bill.
Or is this an older card that they've kept in a box for a year before revealing to the world?
It's basically the same technology as the 970, on a chip half the size.
How would this improve my life?
Judging by the inaneness of your post, the only way is up.
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