INNO3D GeForce GTX 950 C95U-1SDV-E5CMX

The Inno3D iChill series of video cards is opened by the GeForce GTX 950 model, the junior representative of the NVIDIA Maxwell 2Gen architecture. There are two versions of this graphics card — iChill and iChill Ultra. The frequency formula for both versions is the same: 1178-1367 MHz for the core (for comparison, the reference frequency is 1024-1188 MHz) and 6800 MHz for the memory (reference 6600 MHz). Video cards differ in the cooling system.

The iChill heatsink is made from a single piece of aluminium, while the iChill Ultra is made from individual aluminium fins held together with copper heatpipes, plus a steel backplate. Both versions have two nine-centimeter fans. As a result, the slightly more expensive iChill Ultra heats up less, which means it has better chances for successful manual overclocking (it also depends on the particular graphics card instance).

Due to the high factory overclocking, we can recommend the younger Inno3D iChill GTX 950 to those who do not want to spend time on manual overclocking. And the older iChill GTX 950 Ultra with an improved heatsink is for those who, on the contrary, are used to squeezing maximum performance out of the graphics card using manual overclocking.

Test results

The older version of Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 950 2GB Ultra came to our test. We decided to abandon synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark and Unigine Valley, as they show numbers that mean nothing in fact. Real games are a completely different matter: the people's favorite GTA V, fresh Doom 2016, The Witcher 3 with a huge open world, Star Wars Battlefront on the advanced Frostbyte 3 engine and DirectX12-based Rise of the Tomb Raider. Simply put, the most resource-intensive games of 2015-2016 were selected for the test. Testing was conducted at FullHD screen resolution, frame rate was measured using the Fraps application.

Average frame rate in games GeForce GTX 950, 1920x1080, cps

• GTA V — Medium-high graphics settings — 50 fps
• Doom — Medium-high graphics settings — 54 fps
• The Witcher 3 – High — 50 fps
• Star Wars Battlefront — Ultra graphics settings — 48 fps
• Rise of the Tomb Raider — Very-high graphics settings — 32 fps

Cheaper and more expensive alternatives

Considering that the AMD Radeon R7 370 at the same price is slightly behind the GTX 950 in terms of performance, and the Radeon R9 380 is much more expensive, we have to look for alternatives among the NVIDIA solutions themselves. The junior GeForce 750 Ti is equipped with 1 or 2 GB of video memory. And if some modern games do not run at all on a one-gigabyte graphics card (for example, Assassin's Creed Syndicate), then a two-gigabyte one is quite the place to be. The GTX 750 Ti loses to the GTX 950, depending on the game, by 30-40 percent, that is, how much cheaper, so much weaker.

By the way, it is Inno3D that offers one of the cheapest 2GB versions of the GTX 750 Ti. It's not a dual-fan iChill, of course, but a GTX 750 Ti with a measly 60 watts of heat dissipation doesn't require serious airflow.

If, on the contrary, you need something more powerful, you should take a closer look at the GeForce GTX 960. Especially since the versions of this graphics card with 4 GB of memory have finally fallen in price to an acceptable level. And if now the GTX 960 is only 20-30 percent more powerful than the GTX 950, then in the future, with the growth in video memory consumption by games, the difference should increase. The Inno3D range includes GTX 960 versions with one (Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 N960-3SDV-M5CN), two (Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 N96L-1DDV-M5CNX) and even three (Inno3D GeForce GTX 960 C960-2SDN-M5CNX) fans.