PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB

GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Introduction Recently we took a long hard look at the recently released PNY GeForce GTX 960 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB video card and walked away impressed with not only the value this card offered, but the very fact that PNY were willing to release a new GeForce GTX 960 model on the virtual eve of the GeForce GTX 1060's release. On the surface that sounded ludicrous but two of those cards in SLI proved to simply be too good a value to pass up! Today we are going to take a look at its little brother, the $160 PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB to see if it is as good an option as its big brother was. As the name suggests the PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB is a GeForce GTX 950 2GB factory overclocked model that sports a custom heatsink and fan design. To be specific it uses a slightly modified version of what the GeForce GTX 960 OC Gaming comes equipped with. That is to say the newest version of PNY's heatsink design that has powered numerous award winning models to greatness. Put another way this new design quickly impressed us as it is not only more effective at keeping the core cool, but can do so at even lower noise levels - so much that at idle the fans stop . However, with their built in LEDs these fans are awfully pretty when running and never really got above a whisper… and yet kept a heavily overclocked GeForce GTX 960 cool and happily chugging along at its boost speed. As the factory overclock that PNY has bestowed upon their latest GeForce GTX 950 creation the OC Gaming XGB comes with a stock speed of 1152Mhz and a boost speed of a very impressive 1342Mhz. Compare and contrast this with a NIVIDIA 'reference' GeForce GTX 950 that has a stock speed of 1024Mhz and a piddly maximum boost speed of 1188MHz and you can see that PNY are serious about pushing the (cut down) GM206 to its limits! Equally impressive is that PNY has once again factory overclocked the memory from an effective speed of 6,600Mhz to 7,200MHz. This last overclock is actually the most important. As we all know the small 128-bit bus that all GeForce GTX 950's (and 960's for the matter) come with is a major bottleneck; so anything that can boost the bandwidth is a good thing. In this case the memory bandwidth has been boost at the factory from 105.6GB/s to 115GB/s and this should provide a much needed real world improvement in performance! As PNY so graciously sent is two for review we will not only see what one of these cards can do, but what they can do in SLI. With this in mind we will be highly interested to see if picking up two of these instead of spending twenty dollars less for a used GeForce GTX 970. GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Specifications and Features GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - A Closer Look The shipping container that houses these new GeForce GTX 950 cards are exactly like the ones the GeForce GTX 960 Gaming OC cards come in. That is to say they are attractive, have plenty of information on the back, and are generally very good. The only issues is it so close the 960's that it is easy to mix the two models up! On the positive side, the internal packaging is also just like the exterior: superior to all previous PNY video cards. As you can see the GeForce GTX 950 Gaming OC 2GB comes nestled in a rather impressive amount of form-fitting foam. This amount of protection means that even if you drop the box the card will survive. Honestly, you could probably drop this box out a second story window and the card would probably survive! The accessories are also the same as the Gaming OC '960. That is to say PNY includes a single 6pin PCI-e adapter, a single digital to analog port adapter, a quick start guide, and a CD with the necessary drivers. Overall this covers all the bases nicely and we have little issues with PNY not including more than this. As you can see this resemblance to the GeForce GTX 960 Gaming OC continues past just the shipping container, so much so that it appears that both uses the same cooler with the same fascia. This to us is a good thing as the Gaming OC GeForce GTX 960 came with a rather impressive custom heatsink and fan design… and considering the GeForce GTX 950 comes with an even cooling running core this does point towards very good things on the overclocking front. To be more precise this custom cooler design consists of two large heatpipes, copious amounts of aluminum cooling fins and two fans to keep it cool. Put another way this heatsink and fan combination is overkill for this level video card and we are amazed to see that PNY has (re)used this design on a cheaper model! The only minor issue is that does make this '950 a lot longer than some other models – so much so we would not want to try and place this in a small m-ITX case. The only minor issue is the black fascia covering is plastic, but given the lowering asking price of this GeForce GTX 950 model we have a lot fewer issues with this than on the 960 version. This lower price point is also why we are not overly disappointed with the PNY GeForce GTX 950 Gaming OC not coming with a backplate. On the positive side even though this is a less expensive model PNY has included the same red LED equipped fans. These fans do make for a rather attractive looking system, especially when paired with a LED equipped motherboard such as ASUS X99 STRIX Gaming. With the heatsink removed we can see that the PCB is also basically the same as what the GeForce GTX Gaming OC uses. That is to say a full length PCB that comes with its own custom VRM, VRM heatsink, and makes full use of the dual fan setup. Equally interesting is the Gaming OC GeForce GTX 950 uses a 3 phase design for its power delivery subsystem… just like the 960…. right down to the 'missing' fourth phase. Considering it was not a limiting factor with the much higher TDP 960 core we doubt this will be a problem with this 75 watt TDP model. This combination of lower powered core with an efficient power subsystem is why this model only has a single 6-pin power connector. Of course, at stock settings this model could almost draw enough power from the PCIe slot to not even need a 6pin connector… especially if PNY had pulled an 'AMD' and gone above spec. Since they did not this 6-pin connector will provide way more than enough power to even heavily overclocked versions of this model. As to the factory overclock this model comes with a nearly 13% overclock on the GM206 core, and better still, a 9.1% overclock on the RAM. This is rather impressive given the fact that this version of the '206 core was never known for its overclocking ability. After all this class card of cards is more entry level / 1080P resolution cards meant for more casual gaming. The rear ports on this card are also the exact same as the 960 version. This means XLR8 OC Gaming comes with the two DVI-D, and one (full-size) HDMI, as well as one (full-size) DP ports. This covers all the bases nicely and does so without needing adapters. Equally important due to the layout there is plenty of rear ventilation slits so some of hot air should still exhaust out the back of the case – even though this card makes use of a custom dual downdraft cooler instead of a reference blower design. GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Testing Methodology To fully test the abilities of a given video card, we have used a blend of in-game benchmarks and custom recorded real world game benchmarking. For custom game play we have used FRAPS to record the minimum and average frame rates and to do so for a set period of time. All tests were run a minimum of four times and the scores are the average of all four runs. All games were patched to their latest version. The OS was a fresh clean install of Windows 7 with all latest hotfixes, patches and updates applied. All games were tested at the two of the most popular resolutions of 1080P (1920x1080) and then again at 1440P (2560x1440). This means each game’s tested was run a minimum of 8 times: 4 @ 1080P and 4 @1440P. Before testing Unigine’s Valley benchmark was run for 15 minutes to ‘warm up’ the video card. This was done to ensure that long term performance and not short term performance is being illustrated. The games used for testing were: Sleeping Dogs Metro: Last Light BioShock Infinite Crysis 3 Batman: Arkham Origins Tomb Raider Battlefield 4 Assassins Creed: Black Flag Call of Duty: Ghosts Witcher 3 For stress testing we used Unigine’s Valley benchmark. For overclocking we used either the manufactures included software overclocking program or if necessary EVGA’s Precision X program. Drivers: GeForce 368.69 Main Test System Processor: Intel i7 5930K Memory: 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3333 Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X99 Cooling: Noctua U12S SSD: 1x Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe SSD Power Supply: Corsair AX860i Monitor: Dell U2714H OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Gaming Benchmarks Sleeping Dogs Gaming Benchmark Sleeping Dogs is an open world action-adventure video game developed by United Front Games in conjunction with Square Enix London Studios and published by Square Enix, released on August 2012. Sleeping Dogs has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are the Extreme display settings and a resolution of 1920x1080. World density is set to extreme, Vsync disabled, high-res textures are enabled, and shadow resolution, shadow filtering, screen space ambient occlusion, and quality motion blur are all set to high. Metro: Last Light Gaming Benchmark Metro: Last Light is a DX11 first-person shooter video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features action-oriented gameplay. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play. Scene D6 was used and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Very High for quality and a resolution of 1920x1080. DirectX 11 is used, texture filtering is set to AF 16X, motion blur is normal, SSA turned on and tessellation is set to high. BioShock Infinite Gaming Benchmark BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games, and published by 2K Games released in March 2013. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are UltraDX11 (option 3) for quality and a resolution of 1920x1800. Tomb Raider Gaming Benchmark Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game published by Square Enix and released in March 2013. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Ultimate default settings for quality (sans 'hair' shading), VSync disabled and a resolution of 1920x1080. Batman Arkham Origins Gaming Benchmark Batman: AO is an action-adventure video game published by Warner Bros and released in October 2013. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 1920x1080. Anti-Aliasing is set to TXAA (high). Motion blur, Distortion, Lens Flare, Light Shafts, and Reflections set to On. Geometry, Dynamic Shadows, Depth of Field, and Ambient Occlusion all set to DX11 Enhanced. Battlefield 4 Gaming Benchmark Battlefield 4 is first person shooter video game, published by EA Digital Illusions CE and released in October 2013. Unlike most, this games does not include an in-game benchmark. This makes it perfect for more real world gaming tests. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded the first 90 seconds of the single player Tashgar level. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Ultra pre-set for quality, with VSync disabled and a resolution of 1920x1080. Assassins Creed: Black Flag Gaming Benchmark Assassins Creed: BF is an historical action-adventure video game, published by published by Ubisoft and released in October 2013. Like Battlefield 4 this games does not include an in-game benchmark. This makes it perfect for more real world gaming testing. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded a custom run through Havana’s marketplace. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 1920x1080. Environment quality was set to very high, Anti-Aliasing was set to TXAA 4X, Ambient Occlusion set to HBAO+ (high), Shadow Quality set to ‘soft shadow’, Motion Blur and Volumetric Blur both set to On. Texture Quality, Reflection Quality, and God Rays all set to High. Call of Duty: Ghosts Gaming Benchmark Call of Duty: Ghosts is a first person shooter video game, published by Activision and released in October 2013. Since it does not include an in-game benchmark, it perfect for more real world gaming testing. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded 90 seconds of the single player ‘Ghost Stories' level, starting as soon as we resume control of Logan back on Earth. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 1920x1080. Image Quality, Textures Resolution, Normal Map Resolution, and Specular Map Resolution set to Extra. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and Antistrophic Filtering set to High, Terrain Detail set to ON, and Anti-Aliasing was set to TXAA 4X. With Shadows, Distortion, Motion Blue and Depth of Field set to Yes. Crysis 3 Gaming Benchmark Crysis 3 is a first person shooter video game, published by Electronic Arts and released in February 2013. While older than some of the others it is one of the most visually stunning games released to date and puts a lot of demands on the GPU. This makes it perfect for more real world gaming testing. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded 90 seconds of the single player ‘Post Human' level, starting as soon as soon as prophet is handed a Hammer II pistol by Psycho. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 1920x1080. Texture Quality, Game Effects, Objects, Particles, Post Processing, Shadows, Shading, Water, and System Specs all set to Very High. Motion Blur was set to High and Lens Flare was set to On. Anti-Aliasing was set to MSAA 8X and Antistrophic Filtering was set to 16x. Witcher 3 Results Witcher 3 is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED and released on May 2015. Our test uses a real world timed benchmark that consists of three minutes of game play during the 'Beast of the White Orchard' quest. This section of the game incorporates everything from grass, to water, to hair, to numerous NPCs. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Ultra display settings, but with HairWorks off and Vsync disabled, at a resolution of 1920x1080. GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Temperature, Noise, and Power Analysis Video Card Temperature Results For all temperature testing the cards were used in an open test bed environment. Ambient temperature was kept at a constant 20°C (+/- 0.5°C) and if the ambient room temperatures rose above 21°C or dropped below 19°C at any time, all benchmarking was stopped until proper temperatures could normalized. For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak temperature. For Load tests, we ran Unigine’s Valley benchmark for 20 minutes. As you can see this card may come with a rather large factory overclock the custom heatsink and fan design is more than up to the task. It obviously was a smart move to reuse the 960's design for this lower model! Sound Level Test Results While everyone "hears" noise differently there is one easy way to remove all subjectivness and easily compare different fans: use a sound level meter. This way you can easily compare the various fans noise envelopes without us coloring the results and see what fans fit within your personal comfort level. Of course, we will endeavor to try and explain the various results - which are taken at a 15 inch distance from the GPU’s fan(s) - to help you gain an even better understanding of how loud a cooler's stock fan is, but even if you discount our personal opinions, the fact remains numbers don't lie. For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak dB. For Load tests, we ran Unigine’s Valley benchmark for 20 minutes and recorded the peak dB. Thanks to a cool running core, even when overclocked, and an excellent custom heatsink and fan design the PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB is a rather silent running card. Better still is it does come with a 'silent' mode that can and will stop the fans when the video card is idling. That just underscores exactly how efficient and effective this custom heatsink really is. System Power Consumption To obtain accurate results we have connected the system to a Power Angle power meter that has in turn been attached to a 1500watt UPS. This ensures only 120volt power is supplied to the PSU and removes an variances that could potential crop up because of brownouts and power spikes. In order to stress the video card we have once again used Unigine’s Valley benchmark and ran it for 20 minutes to determine peak system power consumption. For idle results we have let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak idle power consumption. Even with a hefty factory overclock this card is still a power miser. GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Overclocking To discover our sample’s overclocking abilities we used EVGA’s Precision X software and began raising power and thermal thresholds to the maximum allowed and then increased the voltage also to the maximum permitted. Then using Unigine’s Valley benchmark we began stability testing. When it comes to manual overclocking, there are two separate and distinct ways of looking at the new PNY GeForce GTX 950 Gaming OC. The first is that PNY has basically done most of the hard work for you already and that the further overclocking efforts will result in only moderate improvements on the core. Put another way enthusiasts wanting to push the Gaming OC 950 even further will be a bit disappointed as there is not much 'gas' left in this tank. Of course hitting 1510 on a 950 is still bloody impressive and does make for a surprisingly peppy little card. No matter which opinion you hold, there is one silver lining to this potent little powerhouse and that is RAM overclocking. By swapping out the NVIDIA spec'ed GDDR5 RAM for higher performance RAM, PNY has opened up a world of possibilities. Basically while a factory overclock of 9.1% is darn decent and does make the Gaming OC one of the better GTX 950's enthusiasts can do better…. much, much better. Basically with just a bit of effort we were able to push the RAM to 7600Mhz (effective). This boosts the memory bandwidth from the improved 115GB/s level to 121.6GB/s. Compare and contrast this with a references 105.6GB/s and as you can see this is a great improvement in one of the largest weakness this GM206 has. In the end we achieved a 12.5% overclock on top of the factory overclock, or a total 27.1% over reference; and a 5.6% overclock on the RAM from the already overclocked levels of 9.1% – for a total 15.2% RAM overclock. No matter how you slice it that is still a darn decent level of performance to expect from such an inexpensive video card… and allows this GeForce GTX 950 to nip at the heels of a GeForce GTX 960. Color us impressed… even if we were craving even more on the core side of the equation. GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Performance Summary and TL;DR In an effort to make sorting through all the results as easy as possible we have combined the results all of all the game results into an easy to digest summary format. By comparing it to similar products in all the games you will be able to easily find the game(s) you are interested in, see the improvement and decide if it is the worth the investment. Single Video Card SLI Video Cards The GeForce GTX 950 was never meant to be a powerhouse, but thanks to a combination of factory overclocking, great custom cooling, and some hardware level improvements the PNY GeForce GTX 950 Gaming OC 2GB is a darn fine card that can handle 1080P gaming with aplomb. Score Card and Summary Packaging & Accessories: 8 out of 10 The packaging the PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB comes with the exact same as the 960 uses. That is to say it is stylyish while being more protective than a momma grizzly bear. The accessory list is more than adequate for this price range but it is rather unfortunate that PNY did not also upgrade the included accessories. Functionality & Aesthetics: 18 out of 20 The more models we see coming equipped with this new cooler design the more we like it. It truly is attractive as it is potent at allowing for some hardcore overclocking. Color us impressed. Build Quality & Warranty: 19 out of 20 For a GeForce GTX 950 series this is one over -built card… and the only thing more impressive than the build quality is the lifetime warranty. Performance: 23 out of 30 As we saw throughout testing the PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB is surprisingly powerful… especially when in SLI. Of course SLI can not fix the narrow memory bus but with some copious amounts of overclocking even this is not that big an bottleneck. Value: 16 out of 20 For consumers on a limited budget PNY has knocked it out of the park with this one. It may not be a powerhouse, but for the asking price it is damn close and will provide more performance than anyone has any right to expect from a GeForce GTX 950! Final Score: 84 out of 100 We have never been overly impressed with NIVIDIA's GeForce GTX x50 series… but damn does this PNY GeForce GTX 950 OC Gaming ever impress us. Honestly, it is one of maybe two models that we would even consider spending money on. GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming - Closing Statement In many ways the new PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming is just as impressive as its bigger sibling the 960. Unfortunately, in just many other ways this cut-down GM206 based model is not as impressive. This is because the XLR8 960 OC Gaming was a very capable video card and at a wide range of resolutions, whereas a 950 – even a heavily overclocked model – is really only meant for 1080P. The smaller bus and the smaller core all adds up to being a bridge too far for anything above 1080P resolutions. This however is no shape nor form the fault of PNY or their new GTX 950. Instead it simply is because NVIDIA have cut too much meat off an already cut-down core. So much so that even with an amazing amount of factory TLC this card is still limited to lower resolutions. By the same token what PNY was able to do is rather impressive. They really have been able to take lemons and make one hell of refreshing lemonade. The massive factory overclock on the core and rather high factory overclock on the memory does pay dividends. The payout for all this hard work is a blurring of the lines between what a reference GeForce GTX 960 can do and what this new series can do. Considering that two of these cards will only set you back $320 and a single GeForce GTX 970 model will set you back $270… well there is something to be said for taking the brute force approach. Equally impressive is that even though these cards come factory overclocked careful consumers will find even more potential to be unlocked. This is because PNY has upgraded many of the critical components far beyond what is usually found with GeForce GTX 950s. Basically PNY took their next generation GeForce GTX 960 and simply swapped in a GTX 950 core! That really is amazing and when paired with their new custom heatsink design, this card is as potent a performer as it is pretty to look at. In the end the PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming may not be right for all scenarios nor all consumers, but if we were looking to purchase a low power, low noise solution that actually has a bit of horsepower under the hood this card would be on our short, short list.

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