If you hadn’t guessed by the influx of micro PCs, Intel NUCs, and ever shrinking single PCB systems over the past few years, small computing is in. The same goes for graphics cards, with AMD slimming down its Fury line-up of GPUs, and Nvidia doing something similar with its GTX 950s by ditching the power plugs and making them more efficient.
Although a few companies have beaten it to the punch (ASUS, MSI and EVGA), Gigabyte is jumping aboard that wagon and has released a GTX 950 of its own, sans 6pin connector. It’s also half the length of the traditional GTX 950 and though it sports dual slot thickness, it also features a shortened cooler with a single fan.
Gigabyte is looking to differentiate its card by featuring ridged blades on its 90mm fan, which purportedly increase airflow by 23 percent without increasing noise levels.
Related: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 review
Inside, the card is quite typical. It features the GM206 GPU paired up with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Component choice is said to be of a high quality, with lower-switch resistant MOSFETS, ferrite core chokes, and solid capacitors, which should guarantee a long shelf-life for the card. It also has a few clock-speed presets, so you can give its core and memory a little boost if you like.
The modified GTX 950 also supports Gigabyte’s OC Guru II overclocking software, so you can do it all manually. You can no doubt boost the performance a bit more than it was intended for. It may mean higher power draw and a faster spinning (read: louder) fan, but those are the typical trade-offs for performance.
Connectivity wise, buyers can expect a pair of DVI ports, a single HDMI, and another singular DisplayPort connector (as per TechReport). No pricing information has yet been released.
Although far from a stand out, the Gigabyte low-power GTX 950 is a nice looking package. Would you consider it for an entry level gaming system?
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