ASUS & EVGA GeForce GTX 950 - Most bang for your buck?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,503 words · ~7 min read
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well the 980 TI and Titan X from NVIDIA might be super exciting cards the cards
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that are really flying off shelves aren't usually they those top tier Bank
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breaking Beast Machines they're the more reasonable workhorses just like with
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cars people like to look at the top end for what they want and then trickle down
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from there for what they can actually realistically afford but let's take a
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moment to leave that sports car on the lot and take a spin in the Sedan like
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this video if you want to see scrapyard Wars 3
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the master case 5 by Cooler Master gives you the freedom to truly make your mid
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Tower PC case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories click now
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to learn more as far as raw tech specs go the GTX 950 is rocking
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768 Cuda cores with a base clock of 1024
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and a boost clock of 1188 on the memory
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side of things that has 2 gigs of gddr5 running at 6.6 gbits per second on a
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128bit wide memory interface it also
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supports four displays and two-way SLI NVIDIA is lining up the performance of
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this product with their previous GTX 760
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and all of that was probably pretty
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expected what was really cool with the launch of this was that NVIDIA brought
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to the table a whole bunch of software options first up in terms of those
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software options we have latency in has built some stuff into GeForce experience
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that will automatically improve the latency in mobile games and by a pretty
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considerable amount in their testing they marked the input latency of a GTX
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650 in Dota 2 to be about 80 milliseconds and the input latency of a
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950 to be only 45 milliseconds a pretty
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massive Improvement of 35 milliseconds they do this by reducing the number of
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pre-rendered frames from two to just one so that they no longer have to buffer
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multiple frames which made a fairly significant amount of input latency
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after that the changes become a little bit more basic and focus around game
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settings like setting it to full screen instead of just borderless mode which
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while it's helpful for compatibility can hurt your input latency numbers so you
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can optimize your mobile game for optimal refresh rate frame rate latency
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and image quality in one click pretty slick but for those of you on higher end
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NVIDIA GPU you may be wondering where the heck your latency enhancing button
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is well NVIDIA is only launching this Improvement for 950 owners at first but
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never fear it will be coming at a later date next up we have stream but I'll get
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to what exactly stream is in a moment with the stream update Shadow play has
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gotten easier to use now when you're in game if you hold alt and then press a
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zed a handy in-game menu will pop up with your Shadow play options and they
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even now allow you to trim and upload your videos directly to YouTube at up to
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4K resolution at 60 FPS badass also in
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the previously mentioned altz menu you may have noticed the new stream button
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this allows you to either just stream your gameplay directly to a friend to
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show off that fancy new title that your buddy didn't have the cash for but wants
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to see and whatnot or show them how to beat a certain encounter in a certain
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game or even play with them with gamestream Co-op Co-op supports mirrored
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controls and integrated voice chat so you can coach someone on how to play a
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game and share the controls with them at the same time or play games that
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actually support co-op mode like say Trine 3 NVIDIA recommends an up and
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downstream of around 7 megabits per second for both the host and the guest
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PCS respectively now finally benchmarking and performance here with
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me today I have not one but two badass graphics cards one from isus and one
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from EVGA Let's Get The Showdown started the ASUS 950 stxs is $10 cheaper on
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Amazon at $170 and features a stock memory setup
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with an advertised boost clock speed of 1355 although that doesn't really mean
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much if you're wondering why that doesn't mean much check out this video
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here where I investigate the inner workings of the mysterious GPU boost the
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STX features dual DVI out DisplayPort and HDMI on the back and is kind of a
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compact design with a smaller heat sink and smaller fans than the EVGA card
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we'll see in a moment it also features six pin power and a nice flat matte
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black PCB on the back of the card the EVGA 950 for the wi card is a little
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longer and $10 more expensive on Amazon at
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$180 still featuring a stock memory setup but with an improved advertised
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clock speed of 1405 for Io it has triple DisplayPort
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HDMI and DVI it features an 8 Pin power
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instead of six pin power has a nice Wicked looking back plate and a much
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beefier cooler performance-wise it was rather unsurprising in terms of results
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not bad mind you just unsurprising unfortunately I don't have an R9 380 to
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test against uh that would have been a fairly interesting comparison at only
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$20 more but I think you guys will get the gist of it anyways the performance
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difference between the two 950s wasn't huge but in my opinion probably worth
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the $10 Delta to be fair though there's something to be said about the compact
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size of the ASUS stxs card a lot of
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people are building small systems these days and may not be looking for longer
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cards just something to keep in mind in terms of raw GPU boost performance the
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ASUS strix 950 got a boost clock of 1430
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MHz solid more than their advertise number that's cool the EVGA for the win
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950 got 1,493 however for the same GPU having a
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Delta of 63 MHz is actually fairly significant and pretty interesting in
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conclusion I was happy to see NVIDIA drop some really cool new software tech
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for both performance and raw features both system Builders and mid-tier gaming
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rig buyers have a new variable to consider which is always a good thing
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more options is good and it's a pretty
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solid card at that awesome show great
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job and on that subject massdrop.com
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which is based around the concept of group buys where people would get
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together and they'd like a bunch of people on a forum or whatever would be like yeah what if we all bought this
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thing do you think the manufacturer would give us a deal turns out that's a
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thing but it was hard to stay organized and you had to trust your money to one
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person in the group who from time to time would run off with it cuz this is
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people on the internet well now we have an organized trustworthy place to do
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that massdrop.com so right now they're
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featuring a drop on the Sennheiser hd7 DJs that feature a 270 Dee swiveling ear
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cup so you can go ahead and get that out of the way of your ear DJ style if you
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want to hear what's going on around you or let's say for example you have a baby that you're supposed to hear when he or
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she is crying or whatever else and that drop is already down to 43% off the
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retail price if you guys want to check it out all you got to do is head over to
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draw do/ Linus techtips and you can sign
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up for the drop Mass drop negotiates deals directly with the manufacturer or
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an authorized distributor to ensure that you guys are getting not only a great
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deal but genuine merchandise they're good guys so get signed up for the site
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and start browsing because they have a lot more than just headsets and
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headphones they got things like knives and keyboards and all kinds of cool
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things thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to to do but
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if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider
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supporting us directly by using our Amazon affiliate code to shop at well
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Amazon buying a cool t-shirt that is not this one or with a monthly direct
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contribution through the Forum now if you're done doing all that kind of stuff
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you're probably wondering what to watch next so as I can see it behind Brandon
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there you should check out the video on the mineral oil cooled computer we built
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right here actually