PNY GTX 950 2GB Review

The PNY GTX 950 2GB graphics card may look a little insubstantial when compared to other GTX950 solutions we have tested in recent weeks, however we have been rather impressed with the overall performance, especially considering the lower retail price.

At £150, many of the customised, overclocked GTX950 partner solutions are going to be a tough sell, especially when GTX960 cards such as THIS and THIS are available at exactly the same price in the United Kingdom. This PNY GTX950 2GB card is £20 less, retailing at £130 inc vat in the UK right now which helps create a somewhat discernible price differential.

PNY have been able to lower the retail price due to several decisions. They have decided not to add a PCB backplate to this card, which is likely to save them a couple of pounds. While this would generally be a concern, our testing has highlighted that Maxwell is a cool running architecture and even without the backplate, the PCB is maintaining a temperature dynamic well below 70 Celsius, under load.

PNY have decided not to increase clock speeds. While the certification for this wouldn't be that expensive in the grand scheme of things, it does eliminate the need for any special hardware selection process at the production line.

Gaming performance from the GTX950 is actually better than many would think. We were able to play a suite of new and older AAA titles with Ultra and High image quality settings. Grand Theft Auto V was a great gaming experience at 1080p, with image quality set at Very High, albeit with frame killing MSAA disabled. Tomb Raider was super smooth at 1080p with the Ultimate preset enabled. At the same resolution with High image quality settings Battlefield 4 managed to maintain playable frame rates.

Additionally, our PNY GTX950 sample responded very well to manual overclocking with 25% and 18% available from the core and memory respectively. This manual software tweak increased Grand Theft Auto V engine performance from 61 fps to 72 fps. This was actually very noticeable as the minimum frame rate figures also increased and proved to be a little more stable in certain situations.

You can buy the PNY GTX950 2GB direct from SCAN for £131.94 inc vat HERE.

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Pros:

• least expensive GTX950 solution.
• reasonably quiet.
• massive overclocking potential.
• nicely understated.
• only 218mm long.

Cons:

• PNY could have overclocked this card, even a little.
• No backplate.
• single fan.

KitGuru says: The PNY GTX 950 delivers a solid 1080p gaming experience, and at £20 less than Gigabyte and Asus solutions it proves to be a good final shortlist product.

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