We have been expecting the GeForce GTX 950 for some time and it seems like August will mark the month when NVIDIA launches their budget tier graphics cards. The information comes straight from HWBattle who have leaked the specifications and launch date for NVIDIA's upcoming and budget tier GeForce 900 series graphics card that will be issued a sub-$150 US pricing.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 Specifications and Launch Date Leaked

Currently, the NVIDIA GeForce 900 series comprises of the GeForce GTX 960, GeForce GTX 970, GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 980 Ti and GeForce GTX Titan X. These graphics cards start from a $199 US pricing up to a $999 US pricing on the 12 GB flagship Titan X. It has been more than a year since NVIDIA last touched the sub $150 US market, their latest graphics cards that were featured in this market were also the first Maxwell GPU based cards that include the GeForce GTX 750 Ti and GeForce GTX 750. Those cards were based on the GM107 core architecture that showcased the great power efficient architecture that Maxwell was meant to be part of the high-performance second generation Maxwell cores.

With second generation Maxwell, NVIDIA not only enhanced performance per core but also overall power consumption, clock speeds and integrated several new features with full support of DirectX 12 API. The GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750, although great cards, are now facing stiff competition by the Radeon R7 360 and R7 370 which retail at $109 and $149 US, respectively. With the GTX 960 at $199 US, NVIDIA does have the R9 380 under wraps but the entry level market has seen nothing new from the green team. The GeForce GTX 950 is about to change that when it launches on 17th August.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 is going to feature the GM206 GPU (GM206-250-A1) that features six SMM units that house 768 CUDA Cores, 48 texture mapping units and will retain the 32 ROPs. Based on the Maxwell GPU architecture that is a superb clocker, the GPU will come with clocks of 1150 to 1250 MHz base and 1350 up to 1450 MHz boost clock speeds. On the memory side, the card will feature 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM that operates along a 128-bit bus, running at 6.6 to 6.75 GHz and a maximum bandwidth output of 107.68 GB/s. The card is going to feature a 90W TDP which will be 10W lower than AMD's entry level card (R7 360) but overall, the GTX 950 will be the faster out of the two. Display ports on the card will include Dual-Link DVI-D/DVI-I, HDMI 2.0 and a Display Port 1.2 connector.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 will be one of the last graphics cards based on the Maxwell GPU architecture along with a possible Dual-Chip card that launches close to the Fury X2. After that, NVIDIA is going to make a full transition to HBM2 powered Pascal cards with over 1 TB/s bandwidth and up to 32 GB of VRAM which will make these cards ideal for next generation high-res and VR gaming.

NVIDIA GeForce 900 Series Graphics Cards: