NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 Review: Affordable Maxwell For The Masses

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a couple of final data points -- namely, power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored acoustics and tracked how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you an idea of how much power each configuration used while idling and also while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.

Total System Power Consumption
Tested at the Outlet


power

The GeForce GTX 950 cards from ASUS and EVGA we tested, were quite power friendly. Both of the cards consumed the same about of power at idle, though the EVGA card used somewhat more under load. Both cards, however, consumed the least amount of power of the bunch.

With such low power consumption, it should come as no surprise that these GeForce GTX 950 cards are relatively quiet as well. Both cards are basically inaudible at idle over a typical CPU cooler and PSU fan, especially since their fans can spin down at lower-temps and not product any noise at all. Under load, their fans do spin up somewhat, but both cards remained quiet throughout testing.


Marco Chiappetta

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com

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