Nvidia is announcing a new graphics chip today called the GeForce GTX 950, the most affordable yet to use the advanced Maxwell graphics architecture.
The new chip supports the DirectX 12 applications programming interface, which makes more advanced and realistic games possible. The mid-range chip is considered ideal for PC gamers who play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games, such as Dota 2, League of Legends, and Heroes of the Storm.
These games are fast-action titles that require a lot of interaction, but they aren’t the most demanding games in the market. MOBA titles are played by nearly 30 million gamers a month, and they have seen a tripling of that audience in three years. More than 2,100 MOBA tournaments exist, with 20 million-plus viewers alone watching the most recent Dota 2 championship, which had a winner’s prize pool of $18 million.
Nvidia says that the new graphics chip has a 50 percent reduction in response time in Dota 2 compared to the GeForce GTX 650, an Nvidia graphics chip from three years ago. The GeForce GTX 950 runs Dota 2 at 138 frames per second. That’s fast, as many shooter games run at 60 frames per second. The response time for Dota 2 interactions is just 45 milliseconds, compared to 80 milliseconds for the three-year-old graphics chip.
The new GeForce GTX 950 will sell for just $159. By comparison, the low-end GTX Ti sells for $119 while the high-end GTX Titan X sells for $999. Nvidia has software available in its GeForce Experience suite that adjusts a game’s settings to deliver optimal performance for a given graphics card.
The GeForce GTX 950 has a total of 768 CUDA processing cores, a new video engine that supports the H.265 video standard, and performance that is triple the speed of the older GeForce GTX 650 chip.
Nvidia says the new GeForce GTX 950 is the perfect gateway to gaming with DirectX 12. It runs at 1.024 gigahertz and has a boost clock of 1.188 gigahertz.
Rival Advanced Micro Devices has been touting its ability to run outstanding DirectX 12 applications, such as the upcoming Ashes of the Singularity strategy title from Oxide Games. AMD said its DirectX 12 graphics cards will enable brand new types of games with many more moving objects on a screen.
Nvidia also said that it is releasing a new beta version of its GeForce Experience software that includes a new in-game Share overlay menu. Players can use it to quickly run an instant replay, record gameplay, broadcast a live game, and share captured videos directly to YouTube at 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. And you can do all of this without having to leave the game.
You’ll also be able to stream a version of a game to a friend and play it with them cooperatively. That feature is dubbed GameStream Co-op. The GeForce GTX 950 is immediately available worldwide.