Notebookcheck

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M is an (upper) mid-range, DirectX 11-compatible graphics card for laptops unveiled in March 2015. It is based on Nvidia's Maxwell architecture (GM107 chip) and manufactured in 28 nm. The GTX 950M offers 640 shader units clocked at 914 MHz (+ Boost) as well as fast GDDR5 memory (128 bit, 5000 MHz effective, 80 GB/s). Compared to the previous and technically very similar GTX 850M, the GTX 950M is clocked slightly higher. A detailed performance comparison of the GTX 950M with GDDR5 and DDR3 can be found here.

Some GTX 950M may be equipped with cheaper 900 - 1000 MHz DDR3 memory (1800 - 2000 MHz effective, 28.8 - 32 GB/s), which leads to a 10 - 20 percent lower performance despite the slightly higher core clock of 993 MHz.

Architecture

Compared to Kepler, Maxwell has been optimized in several details to increase power efficiency. Smaller Streaming Multiprocessors (SMM) with only 128 ALUs (Kepler: 192) and an optimized scheduler should lead to better utilization of the shaders. Nvidia promises that a Maxwell SMM with 128 ALUs can offer 90 percent of the performance of a Kepler SMX with 192 ALUs. GM107 features 5 SMMs and thus 640 shader cores, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs (128-bit interface).

Another optimization is the massively enlarged L2 cache (GM107: 2 MB). The increased size can handle some of the memory traffic to allow for a relatively narrow memory interface without significantly reducing the performance.

GM107 supports DirectX 12 with feature level 11_0 only.

Performance

Although the GTX 950M has the same memory bandwidth as the previous GTX 850M, its higher core clock leads to a slightly better performance. Overall, the 950M (GDDR5 version) is about 15 percent slower than the GTX 960M and just slightly behind the old GTX 860M.

Many games of 2014/2015 can be played fluently in FullHD resolution and high detail settings. However, very demanding games such as Assassin's Creed Unity will require lower resolutions and/or details.

Features

GM107 integrates the sixth generation of the PureVideo HD video engine (VP6), offering a better decoding performance for H.264 and MPEG-2 videos. Of course, VP6 supports all features of previous generations (4K support, PIP, video encoding via NVENC API). Unfortunately, HDMI 2.0 is still not supported.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 950M should be similar to (or slightly above) the previous GTX 850M at about 50 watts. Therefore, the GPU is best suited for 15-inch laptops or larger. The 900M series also supports Optimus to automatically switch between an integrated graphics card and the Nvidia GPU.

ManufacturerNVIDIA
GeForce GTX 900M Series
GeForce GTX 980M SLI (compare) 3072 @ 1038 - 1127 (Boost) MHz2x 256 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 970M SLI (compare) 2560 @ 924 - 1038 (Boost) MHz2x 192 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 965M SLI (compare) 2048 @ 924 - 950 (Boost) MHz2x 128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 980M (compare) 1536 @ 1038 - 1127 (Boost) MHz256 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 970M (compare) 1280 @ 924 - 1038 (Boost) MHz192 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 965M (compare) 1024 @ 924 / 935 - 950 / 1151 (Boost) MHz128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 960M (compare) 640 @ 1096 - 1202 (Boost) MHz128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 950M 640 @ 914 - 993 - 1124 (Boost) MHz128 Bit @ 1800 - 5000 MHz
CodenameN16P-GT
ArchitectureMaxwell
Pipelines640 - unified
Core Speed914 - 993 - 1124 (Boost) MHz
Memory Speed1800 - 5000 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeDDR3/GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory4096 MB
Shared Memoryno
DirectXDirectX 12 (FL 11_0), Shader 5.0
Transistor Count1870 Million
technology28 nm
FeaturesBattery Boost, GameStream, ShadowPlay, GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, PhysX, CUDA, SLI, GeForce Experience, GameWorks, Adaptive VSync, DSR, Ansel
Notebook Sizemedium sized
Date of Announcement12.03.2015
Link to Manufacturer Pagehttp://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook...

Benchmarks

3DMark - Time Spy Score 2560x1440
1094 Points (8%)
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Time Spy Graphics 2560x1440
971 Points (7%)
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score 1280x720 offscreen
min: 139393     avg: 187457     median: 198867 (37%)     max: 204769 Points
+ 5 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Extreme Graphics 1920x1080
min: 45989     avg: 75149.4     median: 73448 (10%)     max: 120877 Points
+ 5 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Score 1280x720
min: 1262     avg: 12003.7     median: 13966 (24%)     max: 16389 Points
+ 28 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Graphics 1280x720
min: 18547     avg: 21483.8     median: 21355.5 (12%)     max: 25900 Points
+ 28 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Fire Strike Score 1920x1080
min: 2304     avg: 2898.6     median: 2837.5 (11%)     max: 3448 Points
+ 28 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Fire Strike Graphics 1920x1080
min: 2931     avg: 3253.1     median: 3200 (8%)     max: 3638 Points
+ 28 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Standard Graphics 1280x720
min: 40625     avg: 81849.1     median: 69209 (9%)     max: 162860 Points
+ 20 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 11 - Performance 1280x720
min: 3276     avg: 4393.3     median: 4574.5 (15%)     max: 4892 points
+ 28 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 11 - Performance GPU 1280x720
min: 4046     avg: 4348.4     median: 4367 (9%)     max: 4678 points
+ 28 benchmarks and specifications   - Hide comparison chart
3DMark Vantage
P Result 1280x1024 +
P GPU no PhysX 1280x1024 +
3DMark 03 - Standard 1024x768
min: 43262     avg: 46127.3     median: 43517 (23%)     max: 51603 Points
+ 3 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 05 - Standard 1024x768
min: 19685     avg: 22797.7     median: 23810 (51%)     max: 24898 Points
+ 3 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 06 Standard 1280x1024 +
Unigine Valley 1.0 - Extreme HD DirectX 1920x1080
17.8 fps (12%)
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
Unigine Heaven 3.0 - DX 11, Normal Tessellation, High Shaders 1920x1080
42.1 fps (16%)
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
Unigine Heaven 3.0 - OpenGL, Normal Tessellation, High Shaders 1920x1080
33.9 fps (20%)
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
Unigine Heaven 2.1 - high, Tesselation (normal), DirectX11 1280x1024
56.1 fps (25%)
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
SPECviewperf 11
Siemens NX 1920x1080 +
Tcvis 1920x1080 +
SolidWorks 1920x1080 +
Pro/ENGINEER 1920x1080 +
Maya 1920x1080 +
Lightwave 1920x1080 +
Ensight 1920x1080 +
Catia 1920x1080 +
SPECviewperf 12
Solidworks (sw-03) 1900x1060 +
Siemens NX (snx-02) 1900x1060 +
Showcase (showcase-01) 1900x1060 +
Medical (medical-01) 1900x1060 +
Maya (maya-04) 1900x1060 +
Energy (energy-01) 1900x1060 +
Creo (creo-01) 1900x1060 +
Catia (catia-04) 1900x1060 +
Cinebench R10 Shading 32Bit +
Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64Bit +
Cinebench R15
OpenGL 64Bit +
Ref. Match 64Bit +
GFXBench (DX / GLBenchmark) 2.7
T-Rex HD Offscreen C24Z16 1920x1080 +