MSI GTX 950 Gaming 2G review: A good looking card for Full HD gaming, that runs cool

With the high end Maxwell cards out of the way, Nvidia has released its entry level Maxwell cards - the GeForce GTX 950 . As far as India is concerned, there is a huge market for such cards, as majority of the users are still using a full HD monitor and are yet to graduate to a 4K display. With the GTX 950, Nvidia and its OEM partners want to address the budget crowd. After the GTX 750Ti/ GTX 750 , this will be Nvidia’s second generation entry level Maxwell architecture sporting GPU. So will MSI’s GTX 950 Gaming 2G card be successful in making you upgrade your existing entry level graphics solution? Let us find out. Build and Design  MSI has given a new look to its Gaming series products - with most of the products having a red and black colour theme with the dragon symbol. The MSI GTX 950 Gaming 2G comes with a sturdy metal shroud with a dual Torx fan system, which can be independently controlled. These two 100mm fans are placed atop the heat sink and the design is collectively called Twin Frozr V (the fifth generation). From the top and the base of the heat sink of the card you can see two heat pipes protruding out, for faster heat dissipation. There is no metal backplate cover on the rear side. Despite belonging to the lower end of the GTX 900 series cards, the MSI GTX 950 Gaming 2G sports an impressive build. There is one six-pin power connector and there is one SLI port on the top. In terms of display ports, you get 3x DisplayPorts, 1x HDMI 2.0 port and 1x DVI port. Features The MSI GTX 950 Gaming 2G is based on the Maxwell architecture sporting GM206 GPU which was last seen on GTX 960 graphics cards as well. But the GM206 on the GTX 950 has six SMMs which house a total of 768 CUDA cores, 48 texture mapping units and 32 ROPs. It has a 128-bit memory bus. It supports DirectX 12 as well.  This GPU has a base clock speed of 1026MHz and boost clock speed of 1190MHz in the Silent mode; 1102MHz base clock and 1279MHz boost clock speed in the Gaming mode - in which we tested the card. The card comes with 2GB Of GDDR5 RAM. The card also comes with the Gaming app which lets you switch between Gaming, OC and Silent modes which come with preset CPU and GPU clock speeds It comes with modes such as Eye Rest ,which reduces the blue light coming out from your monitor; Gaming mode boosts up the contrast on your display; Movie mode does dynamic gamma adjustment and so on. Test Setup Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4 RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB (boot drive) Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary) PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Monitor: BenQ GL2250 Performance 3DMark 11 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.  3D Mark (Fire Strike Extreme) This is another synthetic benchmark from Futuremark. We test the card on the Fire Strike Extreme test as it is designed for the enthusiast-level graphics performance. It test the DirectX11 capabilities, using extreme tessellation and volumetric illumination along with smoke simulations which use compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination.  Metro: Last Light Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test.  Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.  Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.  The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an open-world action role-playing game. The story revolves around the protagonist Geralt of Rivia who is on a journey through the lands of the Northern Kingdoms. It is based on the REDengine 3 game engine which is meant for non-linear RPGs. Since the game does not have its in-built benchmark we played a set saved game which involved couple of action scenes and riding on horseback through various terrains including through water. We used FRAPs to keep track of the frame rates. The graphics section also has a separate post processing section. We played using Ultra and Medium settings.  Temperatures We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.  Power Consumption We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.  Verdict and Price in India The MSI GTX 950 Gaming 2G graphics card is priced at Rs 16,850. As can be seen from the charts above, the card is able to give playable frame rates on full HD resolution for all the games that we tested, except for Metro: Last Light and Witcher 3 only on extreme settings. The card runs cool and the load temperature readings at 64 degrees was the lowest we have got with any card we’ve tested. Not to mention the fact that the card runs really quiet. The easy way to switch game profiles through the Gaming app eases overclocking as well. The price may not really be an entry level price, but in the GTX 900 series this is the most affordable card. If you have friends coming down from the US, you could get the card under Rs 13,000 from there. For those currently on the GTX 650, this upgrade path makes a lot of sense. For those on the GTX 750Ti, it would make sense to stick with that card, as the GTX 950 does not offer a very massive jump from the GTX 750Ti, despite being faster than it.