Biostar has reemerged in the mainstream GPU market, this time with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 950, targeting the 1080p budget gamer with its latest endeavor in the graphics card arena.
A graphics card from Biostar is not something you would expect to see (being that it primarily manufactures motherboards), but the company has been making select low-mid tier GPUs for some time now. This latest offering mirrors that of a few months ago, when the company released a version of the GTX 750 Ti, so it makes perfect sense that Biostar would try its hand at releasing a version of the GTX 750 Ti's successor.
This new GPU has a base clock of 1026 MHz and a 1190 MHz boost clock. The 2 GB of GDDR5 runs over a 128-bit memory bus at 6610 MHz. As far as GTX 950s go, Biostar's VN9505XPX1 reference core clock speeds are slow when compared to the likes of the Asus GTX 950 Strix or Gigabyte's GTX 950 Xtreme Gaming graphics cards.
However, we don't think Biostar is trying to compete with these options, despite the massive fans and gamer-friendly shroud. But it's not like the GPU is any less of a GTX 950 than its competition. There are two DVI outputs, a DisplayPort and an HDMI port for support for up to four displays; it has 768 second-generation Maxwell CUDA cores; and it has full DirectX 12 support.
Similar to its motherboard business, Biostar seems to be offering a budget-oriented counterpart to the massively overclocked variants that seem to be permeating the market. Hopefully, that will translate to a lower price tag for a GTX 950, but Biostar hasn't revealed any pricing information yet. However, one could surmise that if it's from Biostar, you can expect to pay less.
Derek Forrest is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware and Tom’s IT Pro. PC gaming, graphics hardware and VR devices are among his favorite topics to cover. He is a lifelong PC enthusiast, former IT administrator and a custom PC builder with a penchant for creating music, voice acting and all things geek.
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