The GeForce GTX 950 is NVIDIA's contender for the entry-level $150-$190 segment, where it will compete with AMD's Radeon R7 370 and R9 285. MSI has released an overclocked version that comes with a decent increase in clock speeds, which results in a 5% performance improvement over the reference GTX 950. This lets the card beat the R7 370 conclusively with a 18% performance gap. The R9 270X is 5% behind and the R9 285 is 15% faster. Against its bigger brother, the GTX 960 it is based on, the MSI GTX 950 Gaming is 12% behind. I would recommend the GTX 950 for 900p gaming, or 1080p with reduced details or less demanding games, like MOBA titles. MSI has overclocked the memory too, but only by 10 MHz, something that hardly makes any difference, I wonder why the increase is so small, the chips can certainly take more as our manual overclocking section shows.

Like all other GTX 950s, the MSI TwinFrozr cooler does a good job at keeping the card cool, which is mostly due to how little heat the GTX 950 GPU produces because of its energy-efficient Maxwell architecture. Due to its bigger size, it does have more cooling capacity than the cooling shrouds on other GTX 950s we have tested. This is the best GTX 950 cooler so far as it delivers phenomenal noise levels, completely stops its fans in idle and light gaming, and is quieter than whisper quiet, barely audible in a completely quiet room. ZOTAC did include a backplate on their GTX 950 AMP Edition, which definitely adds to the product's feel and look, and I wish MSI had done the same even though it is not a requirement in this market segment.

Power efficiency of GTX 950 is excellent, just like on all recent NVIDIA Maxwell cards. In all non-gaming states, which includes Blu-ray playback, we see power draw hover at around the 10-watt mark, which makes it a good candidate for a quiet media PC. Typical gaming power draw is low too, with around 100 watts, which even the weakest PSU should be able to handle.

Overall, the GeForce GTX 950 seems like a very good card, but it is held back by pricing, just like the GTX 960 it is based on. The GTX 950 is basically a cheaper GTX 960, with proportionately less performance but the same feature set. NVIDIA's MSRP is $160 and MSI is asking another $10 for their GAMING variant, which, while a very reasonable increase, brings the price quite close to the GTX 960 that can be had for $190 and offers better performance. When looking at price/performance only, AMD's R9 285 should be on your shopping list as it offers much better performance at an excellent price of $170, a price that could be lower if you are in the market for used cards. AMD's R7 370 is too slow and barely cheaper, and the same goes for the R9 270X. NVIDIA's GTX 960 is another good option if you have a few more dollars to spend.