GTX 950 A Good Budget Card?

[Friskiest]

Is the MSI GTX 950 a good option if you are on a tight budget? 

I had just recently went out on a hunt on Amazon to find myself a new GPU as my old, XFX Ghost R7850 was finally showing signs of dying; screen going black, pixels flashing, vertical and horizontal colored lines. I found the MSI GTX 950, for a decently cheap $160 USD and decided to go with it, getting 2 day shipping also.

 

I'm curious to know, is the 950 a good budget card. (I believe it is.)

 

It doesn't draw too much power, it is basically the equivalent to a GTX 960, and it has 2 GBS of vram, which seems to be enough; at least for now, to run 1080p games with medium to high settings.

 

Did I make a good choice on going with the 950, or should I have saved up, or stretched my budget to be able to get the 970? 

[glitchmaster0001]

it is a great card especially the MSI Gaming one. i used to have that card but then i sold it and bought a Radeon HD 4350 then i bought a geforce 8800 gt and it was like $5 for the HD 4350 and $10 for the Geforce 8800 gt. the reason why i sold it was so that i can buy a new monitor as my old one was failing me. the card was very fast and ran only 65 Celsius when i was bench marking it with uniengine valley and heaven 

[ChaixD]

Well u said if the 950 is a good budget card and it is but going for the 970 would be better but its not really a budget card since its its almost double the 950, i think u made a good choice imo

[Aruxx]

I would and have recommended the GTX 950 as a budget graphics card.  In the price point it's pretty strong and for the people I've recommended it to they've had no complaints.  They've all been EVGA cards though, I'd be interested to know how my favorite brand does with the newer cards (MSI )

[Friskiest]

1 hour ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

it is a great card especially the MSI Gaming one. i used to have that card but then i sold it and bought a Radeon HD 4350 then i bought a geforce 8800 gt and it was like $5 for the HD 4350 and $10 for the Geforce 8800 gt. the reason why i sold it was so that i can buy a new monitor as my old one was failing me 

Okay, great! I thought I had made a good choice going with the MSI edition instead of EVGA or just stock. Currently I'm using a horrible dell stock video card to be able to use one of my two monitors.

[Friskiest]

1 hour ago, Aruxx said:

I would and have recommended the GTX 950 as a budget graphics card.  In the price point it's pretty strong and for the people I've recommended it to they've had no complaints.  They've all been EVGA cards though, I'd be interested to know how my favorite brand does with the newer cards (MSI )

I'll be posting some benchmark results and other things here after I get the card tomorrow! I'm super excited for it! Personally I love the look of MSI cards and the software that comes along with them.

[manikyath]

in my opinion (yours may differ, stfu fanboys) the 950 is a nice stopgap card for people who cant afford any more, or have very limited power supply options.

 

from my own experience in the low end (which this is barely above) the nvidia cards are much more forgiving than the amd ones, where the nvidia cards mostly choke on specific things (like AA and raytracing) the amd cards seem to do these slightly better, but are kinda mehh on all else, requiring you to turn down more settings than just those very computationally heavy ones.

 

that said, it *is* a stopgap on your way to bigger and better things, or for those that dont need some gpu power, but not to the point of wanting a high end card.

[Aruxx]

Just now, Friskiest said:

I'll be posting some benchmark results and other things here after I get the card tomorrow! I'm super excited for it! Personally I love the look of MSI cards and the software that comes along with them.

 

I really liked my MSI 6850, and I've never had problems with anything I've gotten from them.  Apparently their newer cards with the white shroud aren't all that, but it's okay I got my card from EVGA's B-stock pile anyways.

[MrWazoo]

I love my EVGA 950, its great for budget 1080p gaming

[glitchmaster0001]

Just now, MrWazoo said:

I love my EVGA 950, its great for budget 1080p gaming

i used have an evga gtx 950 but i think it was defective or something like it got very low scores in uniengine valley and heaven and extreamly low FPS in my games so i returned it and bought an MSI version of the gtx 950 and i loved it until i sold it since my monitor died and i needed a new one badly. now im using a old geforce 8800 gt and it still can play games at low to medium settings with 60 fps at 1920x1080p 

[Friskiest]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

in my opinion (yours may differ, stfu fanboys) the 950 is a nice stopgap card for people who cant afford any more, or have very limited power supply options.

 

from my own experience in the low end (which this is barely above) the nvidia cards are much more forgiving than the amd ones, where the nvidia cards mostly choke on specific things (like AA and raytracing) the amd cards seem to do these slightly better, but are kinda mehh on all else, requiring you to turn down more settings than just those very computationally heavy ones.

 

that said, it *is* a stopgap on your way to bigger and better things, or for those that dont need some gpu power, but not to the point of wanting a high end card.

In my opinion, I would go with an AMD card if they had better drivers for their GPUs. If they did, then NVIDIA would be practically out of business. But the GTX 950 is low power consuming and it seems to be a more forgiving card, especially in the games that I aim to play. 

[Aruxx]

2 minutes ago, Friskiest said:

In my opinion, I would go with an AMD card if they had better drivers for their GPUs. If they did, then NVIDIA would be practically out of business. But the GTX 950 is low power consuming and it seems to be a more forgiving card, especially in the games that I aim to play. 

I have never understood this driver battle, I've been on both sides of the river and never had problems with drivers.  If I remember correctly, AMD's competitor to the GTX 950 is the R7 370, which the GTX 950 beats in most benchmarks I've seen.  Now go up a step to GTX 960 vs. R9 380, and I'm all for the R9 380.

 

In my opinion I feel like Nvidia has the better card for this price bracket.

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, Friskiest said:

In my opinion, I would go with an AMD card if they had better drivers for their GPUs. If they did, then NVIDIA would be practically out of business. But the GTX 950 is low power consuming and it seems to be a more forgiving card, especially in the games that I aim to play. 

well, in the end it always depends on what you're doing, amd is known to be amazing at compute, but somehow the low end nvidia cards do much better at games. may also just be i have more experience with them tho.

[Nena Trinity]

Beats the 370 but if you can push the budget to a R9 380 that is worth it!

[Guest]

Bang for the buck Nvidia card : The GTX 970

 

3.5 GB is still not a huge difference...

 

That is my opinion.If you want really good 4K results with Nvidia,but if you can pay a little bit more : 980 or 980Ti

[TOBuilDORNoTTOBuilD]

What about Asus gtx 950?