PNY GTX 950 2GB Review

PNY have opted for futuristic ‘robot' style artwork on the front of their box.

The bundle includes a software disc, video converter and some literature.

The card is compact, measuring 218mm long, and a single 92mm fan takes pride of display in the center of the shroud. We wouldn't say it was the most striking looking graphics card we have tested in recent months, but the simple black colour scheme will mean it won't clash with schemed system builds.

The card is built on a dark PCB, and it ships without a backplate. The Gigabyte GTX950 Xtreme Gaming by comparison does ship with a backplate so we can begin to see how the company are justifying the additional cost.

The PNY card takes power from a single 6 pin power connector. The aforementioned Gigabyte Xtreme solution adopts a single 8 pin connector.

The I/O plate is home to a DVI-I and a DVI-D connector, along with a full sized HDMI (2.0 capable – will support 60hz at 4k) and DisplayPort. Other GTX950 partner cards ditch one of the DVI ports and offer a total of three DisplayPorts. We do feel this PNY specific I/O panel is a little less versatile, especially for multi screen configurations.

The cooler is quite small, and rests over the central part of the small 210mm PCB. The single fan actively cools from directly above. We are a little surprised to see that the cooler doesn't incorporate heatpipes.

The GPU core runs at 1,026mhz with a boost speed set at 1,190mhz – the reference card speeds are listed as 1,024mhz – so we have a 2mhz overclock on the core? Bizarre. The 2GB of Samsung GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,653mhz (6.6Gbps effective). These are significantly slower than the Gigabyte Xtreme card which we recently reviewed – this was overclocked to 1,203mhz with a turbo boost set at 1,405mhz.

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