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  • bill.rookard - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    Interestingly enough, this really starts to encroach on the 750ti's home turf, and even more notable is the low-power aspect along WITH the SLI connector...
  • nathanddrews - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    Now if only it came in a low profile model...
  • barleyguy - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    I'd be happy to see a single slot model as well. I'm currently running a single slot video card because my other two slots have studio sounds cards in them.

    My current card is a FirePro v7900, which is roughly equal to a Reason 6950. I have kept an eye out for better single slot options and haven't really seen any.
  • barleyguy - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    Radeon. Stupid autocorrect.
  • Senti - Saturday, April 9, 2016 - link

    Your card looks more like Radeon HD 6930 than 6950. I still have 6950 unlocked into 6970 and that's a wonderful card except pretty much being abandoned by red driver team. Even your card has more SP FLOPS than that GTX950 and almost 10x the DP FLOPS which can be important if some of your software can use the GPU compute.

    On the other hand, I had pretty bad experience with single slot FirePro coolers – they were unbearable loud. If that's the case then changing it indeed worthwhile. Might be better to wait for release of new line of Radeon cards this summer which should be way more power efficient though (even if you are going with NV – for price cuts).
  • barleyguy - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Your analysis is pretty solid, though the FirePro v7900 has extremely fast memory (256-bit GDDR5 @ 1.2 Ghz). It's unlikely that level of memory ever made it to a 6930 card.

    I'm been pretty happy with the fan noise of the v7900. It seems to be very quiet at idle, I think because it has a lot of headroom. At load it does get a lot louder, but still not too bad.

    I briefly tried a v5900, and that thing was like a leaf blower.

    Cheers.
  • dj_aris - Monday, April 11, 2016 - link

    What is the purpose of the SLI connector anyway? Do motherboards with more x16 PCIe slots support 75w for each one?
  • DanNeely - Monday, April 11, 2016 - link

    Yes. They have to because the cards assume they can get 75W from the mobo. It's not just low power cards either; basic models of ~150W cards will typically have only a single 6pin connector, 225W ones 2x6 or 1x 8pin connector. (Higher end over clocking friendly/preOCed models will have connectors that provide extra headroom OFC.)

    You'll see a number of high end mobos including an extra power connector of some sort in the GPU area. Over the years I've seen molex, sata, and more recently 6pin PCIe power headers on the bottom half of the board to provide supplemental power.
  • jabbadap - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    EVGAs European site has prices for 02G-P4-0952-KR = €144,99, 02G-P4-0954-KR = €149,99 and 02G-P4-0956 = €154,99(inc. VAT). Only 02G-P5-258 is missing:

    http://eu.evga.com/Products/ProductList.aspx?type=...
  • jabbadap - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    Doh there is typo in your table it's EVGA GeForce GTX 950 SC GAMING P/N: 02G-P4-0958-KR(€159,99), not 02G-P5-258.
  • WithoutWeakness - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    I'd love to see a low-profile GTX 950 without an auxiliary power connector.
  • Valantar - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    You'll have to wait for the next generation for something like that - a GTX 950 simply won't fint on a PCB that small (unless you make it ridiculously long). With HBM or GDDR5X and a narrower bus, though, this should be quite possible. 14/16nm should give a nice performance boost to <75W GPUs too.
  • mczak - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    I'm not convinced it wouldn't be doable. There's plenty GTX 750Ti with half height, and still quite short versions. Albeit they are still double-height and you get crappy (because wimpy) fan.
    A half-height GTX 950 should not be all that much more difficult to do. Certainly though the pcb would need to be redesigned (as far as I can tell, all those new "low-power" GTX 950 still use exactly the same pcb including vrms etc., they still even have the solder pads for the 6-pin power connector).
  • DanNeely - Saturday, April 9, 2016 - link

    The 750Ti was based on a smaller '07 chip vs the 950 using a larger '06. The 750 is an up-scaled 740, vs the 950 being a downscaled 960. Although the core counts are similar, the 950 is built around a much larger and more capable GPU and needs more external hardware as a result requiring a bigger PCB.
  • Kakti - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    Totally agree - the only reason I'd consider buying this is for an htpc build and if I'm buying a card w/o the need for auxiliary power, it should be single slot as well. If I'm going two slots I might as well buy something a lot more powerful.

    I'm really hoping the new process nodes will allow Pascal and Polaris to get a big bump in performance in this same power envelope
  • Gigaplex - Saturday, April 9, 2016 - link

    Glad I'm not the only one disappointed by the lack of single slot compatibility.
  • DCide - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    I'm not sure I get the advantage of producing models with only 3 outputs. Does it significantly improve the cooling with the additional vent space? If not, it seems this 8-model lineup could be trimmed down to only 3: 0954, 0958, and 1958.
  • DCide - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    Or can it do without the vents at all? E.g. Perhaps it's useful in installations where there's physical space but not an actual second slot, and an extra DVI port would get in the way.

    Otherwise I don't get it - a small cost savings doesn't seem worth the trouble.
  • AnteaterWill - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    I bought a prebuilts HP and put a 750 Ti inside at Christmas time. If I was buying a card today I'd buy that.
  • yhselp - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    Yet again, another 75W GTX 950 that is not low-profile... Not being low-profile totally defeats the purpose. Seriously, what are they thinking?! I refuse to believe it's impossible to dissipate 75W with a low-profile design if that's the excuse.
  • wintermute000 - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link

    its almost like they want me to buy a maxwell card just before pascal drops LOL
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    Did you actually laugh out loud?
  • monk100 - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    His LOL's are a lie.
  • britjh22 - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    Anton, you may want to explicitly list which part numbers (0952,0954,0956) do not require the 6 pin. I had to go out to EVGA's article to figure it out, as it wasn't real obvious in this piece.
  • jabbadap - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link

    Well all EVGA skus mentioned in this article are without 6-pin connector(expect 02G-P5-258, which should be 02G-P4-0958 and the table mentions tdp75W thus no 6-pin pcie plug).
  • damianrobertjones - Monday, April 18, 2016 - link

    The price, for these cards, in the U.K. is stupidly stupid.

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