NVIDIA Preparing For GTX 950 SE Release

NVIDIA manufacturers a wide range of graphics cards to suit various budgets, and the majority of media coverage revolves around their flagship products. However, this is a very small niche, and the many customers opt for GPUs at a more affordable price point. Furthermore, this makes sense given the widespread use of monitors with a 1080p or lower resolution. On the other hand, budget GPUs can offer fairly poor performance, and it’s worth spending an extra £50-100 due to the significant leap in frames-per-second. This isn’t always possible due to budget constraints, but I always recommend a mid-tier graphics card to find a good balance between performance and cost.

The latest budget-friendly GPU from NVIDIA is incredibly similar to the GTX 950 with a number of minor cutbacks. To reiterate, unlike the Ti branding, the GTX 950 SE will be a cheaper alternative to the GTX 950. NVIDIA is planning to retire the GTX 750 Ti and requires two SKUs in their new product line-up. The GTX 950 SE features one less streaming multiprocessor which results in a CUDA count of 640.  The TMU count is reduced to 40, and the total ROP amount reaches 32. This particular GPU opts for a 128-bit memory bus and 2GB GDDR5 memory.

According to ExPreview, custom variants of the GTX 950 SE will consume around 70 watts under load. This means vendors could incorporate a single 6-pin PCI-E, or draw power without the need for a PCI-e connector. Apparently the GPU’s core and memory clock speeds are lower than the GTX 950. Clearly, the GPU’s appeal greatly depends on the price gap to the GTX 950. If there’s a minimal difference in the price, but a marked performance change, then I can’t see it selling very well. NVIDIA is planning to launch this latest graphics card sometime in March. If you’re interested in the lower end solutions, we can take a look at a sample and see how it performs!