Gigabyte Joins 75W Party With Latest GTX 950

Even with pascal so close, Nvidia and their partners are still pushing out new Maxwell based cards. Over the course of the last month or so, ASUS, MSI, and EVGA have all come out with new 75W TDP GTX 950 graphics cards. These new cards delete the PCIe 6 pin power connector, making them a more flexible option. Today, Gigabyte has quietly joined the party with their own 75W GTX 950 offering.

The GIGABYTE GV-N950D5-2GD graphics card is based on the same old GTX 950 GM206 core with 768 stream processors, 48 texture units, 32 ROPs,  and a 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface. Somehow, Nvidia has been able to reduce the TDP from 90W to 75W without reducing base performance. Unlike the versions with power, the new card features a tamer factory overclock, with only 1051 Mhz base and 1228 MHz boost clocks respectively. The cooler is a relatively standard slot with 1 fan. Without the need for a PCIe power connector, it allows the card to be used to upgrade systems that feature a weaker PSU. The value of such a card is diminished though with Pascal being so close. In my view this suggests that Nvidia may leave the low end untouched for a while, with only GP104 launching anytime soon. This may leave AMD with the Polaris 11 relatively unchallenged, only doing battle with older Maxwell cards.