Asus GeForce GTX 950 Strix Review

Asus GeForce GTX 950 Strix 2GB Review

Manufacturer: Asus
UK price (as reviewed): £149.94 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $169.99 (ex Tax)

For the launch of the GTX 950, we were furnished with a Gigabyte card, although naturally all the usual board partners have a variety of SKUs vying for a place in your PC. Today, we have with us the Asus GeForce GTX 950 Strix for consideration. Asus's Strix card have typically impressed, and this one will have to as well since it's £150 price tag puts it at around £25 over the cost of a standard GTX 950, and £10 more than the aforementioned Gigabyte card too.


Thankfully, the factory overclock is very healthy. The base clock of 1,165MHz represents a 14 percent increase over Nvidia's reference speed and gives the card a boost clock of 1,355MHz. There are a handful of faster cards than this on the market from EVGA and Zotac, but the Strix model is certainly one of the fastest GTX 950s around on paper. Disappointingly, that £150 doesn't buy you a memory overclock – the 2GB of GDDR5 here has been left at the stock speed of 6.6GHz effective.


In terms of board design, the GTX 950 Strix sticks to the older selection of connections, which makes sense given its place in the market. The two dual-link DVI ports are joined by HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2 outputs. Power is supplied through a single 6-pin PCI-E connector and the lone SLI finger means you can double up for some added horsepower too, should you wish.


This Strix card uses a plastic cooler shroud but is a solid unit overall with no major build quality scruples to speak of. The shroud is open, so while there are some vents on the rear IO panel, most of the card's resultant heat will be exhausted into your chassis. It measures 220mm at its longest point and is a true dual-slot design. That said, the cooler's heat pipes do extend past the edge of the PCI bracket, though not by much – practically all cases will have room for them.


The design of the cooler is simple. The two thick heat pipes make direct contact with the tiny GM206 GPU and pass up into the fin assembly, which is then cooled by the two fans. These fans are controlled together, and are semi-passive, switching off entirely when the GPU is below 60°C or so. There is no cooling for the four memory chips, which are split two/two between the front and back of the PCB, nor is there any for the VRMs. Like the Gigabyte card, the GTX 950 Strix appears to be using a 4+1 phase power design, with the added bonus of Asus's Super Alloy Power components.


There are no accessories supplied with the card to speak of so, without further ado, let's run some benchmarks.

Specifications

• Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 950, 1,165MHz (boost 1,355MHz)
  
• Pipeline 768 stream processors, 48 texture units, 32 ROPs
  
• Memory 2GB GDDR5, 6.6GHz effective
  
• Bandwidth 105.6GB/sec, 128-bit interface
  
• Compatibility DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5
  
• Outputs/Inputs DisplayPort 1.2, Dual-Link DVI-D, Dual Link DVI-I, HDMI 2.0
  
• Power connections 1 x 6-pin PCI-E, top-mounted
  
• Size 220mm long, dual-slot
  
• Warranty Three years