PNY GeForce GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming Graphics Card Review

John Williamson / 8 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

At the time of writing, the PNY GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming is available from Novatech for £134.99 including shipping. US customers can purchase the graphics card directly from PNY’s website for a very respectable $149.99. This is an excellent value proposition when you consider the kind of gaming experience possible on a tight budget. However, the UK price is extremely close to the MSI GTX 960 GAMING 2G which has been heavily discounted to £149.99.

Overview

Aesthetically speaking, the PNY GTX 950 XLR8 OC is brilliant and I’m really fond of the unusual finish. More specifically, the striking merger of the black and red colours is reminiscent of an industrial production line. Furthermore, the colours combine in a fairly rough manner as there are black specks surrounding the red section. This is a great concept and adds to the product’s appeal. On another note, the fan blade motors feature subtle red LED lighting which compliments hardware sporting the same colour scheme.

The graphics card’s cooling solution features two copper heatpipes, a decent sized heatsink and two high angled fans. This is more than enough to cope with the GPU’s thermal loads because the GTX 950 core doesn’t output a lot of heat. PNY has opted for sensible hardware which enables you to maintain low temperatures without impacting on the compact form factor. The graphics card’s 0dB silent mode is a wonderful addition and creates a joyous user experience when performing basic tasks like web browsing and casual gaming.

In terms of performance, the GPU’s factory overclocked core and memory narrows the gap to the GTX 960 in a number of demanding titles. Throughout the benchmarking process, the GPU didn’t fall behind the GTX 960 by a significant margin and remained within a few frames of its nearest rival. Of course, this gap is widened during synthetic testing but I doubt it’s a major concern for someone opting for a budget graphics card. Clearly, the GTX 950 is designed to be paired with a 1080P monitor and you can achieve excellent frame-rates once some settings have been scaled back. If you’re willing to accept a 30 frames-per-second experience, then it’s even possible to opt for relatively high image quality presets. Most importantly, the graphics card has enough grunt to please consumers on a budget and it’s not going to frustrate them providing they have realistic expectations. On the other hand, this particular version of the GTX 950 is priced extremely close to the GTX 960 and many users might feel it’s a better option to spend slightly more.

By default, the PNY GTX 950 XLR8 OC incorporates a large overclock but this doesn’t mean it’s already on the absolute limit of performance. On the sample I received, it wasn’t difficult to increase the core by 135MHz and memory to an effective speed of 7672MHz. After the overclock was applied, the GPU almost matched the GTX 960 in synthetic testing. Even though overclocking headroom is determined by the silicon lottery, it looks likely that PNY is performing chip binning for the XLR8 series. Therefore, you should be able to achieve some pretty decent overclocks.

Pros

0dB passive silent mode
Beautiful aesthetic design
Competes with the GTX 960 extraordinarily well
Extremely efficient
Great entry card for 1080P gaming
Impressive factory overclock
Three-year warranty

Cons

Price is perilously close to various GTX 960 cards

“The PNY GTX 950 XLR8 OC Gaming features an attractive design and acts as a wonderful entry into the world of PC gaming. Not only that, it’s ridiculously quiet and consumes very little power.

Bang-For-Buck