GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

While Nvidia’s GTX 950 GPU received mixed response upon announcement, GALAX’s White-themed GTX 950 graphics card on the other hand got much attention and praise much due to its beauty of which it really is one beautiful card.

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

The GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE is as what you see in the image below, a dual-fan cooling system that comes with white shroud, white bladed fan and even white colored LED when powered on!

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

Here’s a video, just to give you an idea on what it looks like.

Top down you see the words GEFORCE GTX, I thought this was rather interesting because if I were GALAX I would’ve put my brand there much like how Gigabyte placed the word ‘Windforce’ instead.

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

From the under side there’ no signs of heatpipes other than the ending points.

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

What makes the GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE stand out from the crowd, other than the beautiful cooling system is the backplate, a white one at that too!

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

Here’s the view from the rear, it still comes with DVI output, in fact it has 2 of them! Clearly this card is targetted at budget users who might still be using old monitors.

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

Below is the GPU-Z capture for the card.

GALAX GeForce GTX 950 EX OC WHITE 2GB Graphics Card Review

More details at the official product page.

Test Setup

Processor Intel Core i5-4670K
RAM AVEXIR Blitz 2x 4GB 1600Mhz DDR3
Motherboard ASRock Z87 Extreme4
Cooler NZXT Kraken X31
Monitor Dell UP3214Q
Power Supply FSP AURUM S 700W
Casing NZXT S340
Operating System Windows 10 64bit

Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.

Card 1080p (avg)
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition 31.2
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition OCed 32.7
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition 29.4
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition OCed 31.4
ASUS GTX 960 Turbo 33.2
PowerColor R7 370 18.9

Metro Last Light

Heaven 4.0

Card 1080p (avg)
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition 49
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition OCed 51.33
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition 46
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition OCed 49
ASUS GTX 960 Turbo 55.0
PowerColor R7 370 46

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite
Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K

Card 1080p (avg)
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition 70.07
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition OCed 72.76
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition 66.58
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition OCed 70.97
ASUS GTX 960 Turbo 75.04
PowerColor R7 370 35.06

Shadow of Mordor

Heaven 4.0
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.

Card 1080p (avg)
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition 40.84
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition OCed 41.72
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition 37.02
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition OCed 40.24
ASUS GTX 960 Turbo 46.62
PowerColor R7 370 21.78

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V
Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available. 8xAA for Full HD.

Card 1080p (avg)
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition 19.3
GALAX GTX 950 White Edition OCed 19.7
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition 18.47
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition OCed 19.5
ASUS GTX 960 Turbo 23.4
PowerColor R7 370 21.15

The numbers for GTA V may look low but that’s with 8x AA. The GTX 950 will handle the game well once AA disabled.

Despite being an already overclocked GTX 950, the GALAX GTX 950 with an ASIC score above 80 is capable of an additional 50Mhz increase on core speed. I tried pushing to an additional 100Mhz but it’s a NO GO.

Temperature

Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.

Card Idle(°C) Load (°C)
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition 36 68
Gigabyte GTX 950 OC Edition Full RPM 26 51

The cooler on GALAX’s GTX 950 worked very well, the fan halts on idle and maintains temperature when needed. On full load it manages to maintain load temperature at 51.

Power Consumption

The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an FSP Aurum S 700W with 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test estimated to be around 60w.

Card GALAX GTX 950 White Edition
Furmark Burn-in 215
Estimated Actual System Draw 194
Estimated Card Power Draw 134

Despite the rated power consumption for GTX 950 being 90W, the GALAX unit seems to draw a lot of power on full load, surpassing even that of the GTX 960. Being a card that’s powered by a single PCI-E power connector, this means the card is theoretically capable of drawing up to 145W power.

My best guess is that the card was designed to draw more in order to maintain stability of running at overclocked speed, bear in mind that FurMark pushes the power draw limit but in actual usage the card wouldn’t be running at that draw all the time.

The Verdict

The GALAX GeForce GTX 950 White Edition retails at RM 849, based on my calculation on price to performance ratio one might conclude that it’s not as good as the cheaper cards like say the Gigabyte GTX 950 BUT do consider that the card comes pre-overclocked, it has a beautiful white back plate and it comes with a better cooling system that’s white in color and it comes with white LED that lights up the fans.

Are those details worth the additional RM 50? Yes they are.

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