Where is the Anandtech 950 review

[Stuka87]

IMO, It looks bad (it IS bad) when a major tech reviewing website like here entirely drops the ball twice on consecutive key product releases by a major chip maker and was days late with another chip maker's big key release. Anandtech either needs more writers or the editor in chief needs to take on different (less) responsibility when it comes to researching & writing articles.

Sad, sad, sad. No excuses for it.

Since when is the 950 a "Key Product"? Its a horribly overpriced, cut down version of a chip that has been out for 8 months.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's fixed function (a pretty good one though):-
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/589...f-this-moment-h265-on-the-gtx-960-innpractice

 

[Zodiark1593]

Sad song time?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Sad song time?

Ug, I got an Ivy Mini Itx box just waiting for that cheap Nvidia HEVC GPU to go into service. Maybe it gets a Skylake upgrade instead.

Or maybe I just get an arm box.

 

[shady28]

No rush. I don't think anyone here plans to buy one. We will just use the review as evidence that Nvidia is fleecing people at those price points.

Honestly the 950 pisses me off. On any other product cycle for Nvidia right now in September should be when we get the sub-$100 cards with that HEVC decoder. But here we are and the only cheaper option that has it is a 950! ARG!

Where is the 940 (aka the 750 replacement but with the nice HEVC decoder)? Does HEVC decoding need X amount of shaders to do the job, or is Nvidia just milking the HTPC market for all it is worth? If it is the former, will we not see that HEVC decoder in a sub-$100 part until something at a 950 level is on sale for under $100?

Those are the questions I want answered. We already know what a waste the 950 is.

Nvidia has been mixing up model numbers in their product cycles. Put too much weight on the name and it doesn't make sense. ie, the conventional 7xx line is mostly rebrands of 6xx parts. The 660 in particular was continuously sold until the 960 came out, because it filled a lower power segment that the 760 didn't address (660 would work in single 6-pin < 150W capacities).

In that same vein, the 740 / 750 / 750Ti are not 'last gen' cards, they're the first Maxwells and as such I don't think you will see them directly replaced by another Maxwell. The analogy is in the same way the 7xx line never directly replaced the 660.


Basically Nvidia's current 'modern' lineup is :

740 / 750 / 750 Ti (Maxwell v1)
950 / 960 (Maxwell V2.1, smaller v2 + HEVC)
970 / 980 (Maxwell v2)
980 Ti / Titan (Maxwell v2, just bigger)

I doubt we'll get any more Maxwell chips, though we might see an overclocked version of one of the above with a "Ti" tacked on the end of the name.

I think your best hope is to wait for the 950 to come down in price, probably in a couple of months, assuming it's worth the wait for you. Otherwise, just get one. Personally if it were me, and that filled the bill of what I needed, I wouldn't spend time waiting / watching to save $20-30.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Ug, I got an Ivy Mini Itx box just waiting for that cheap Nvidia HEVC GPU to go into service. Maybe it gets a Skylake upgrade instead.

Or maybe I just get an arm box.

I'd see if your cpu can brute force what you need. If it can, you can probably just hold off for a better priced card down the road.

 

[BSim500]

I don't see the problem? The fixed-function decoder stuff on Maxwell 2's works perfectly well, even at 4K @ 60fps, High Profile, etc. I personally tested several 4K files on a GTX 960 and they played back at barely 3% CPU usage (down from 72% software), +3-5w power consumption above load (down from +35-40w software), smooth as silk, zero glitches, etc. It's not like the old days of having to turn off half the encoder features (Quarter Pixel, GMC, etc) to get a ripped Divx 5 file burned onto a CD/DVD-R to work on your standalone DVD player with a Divx logo. If something doesn't work, it'll either drop-back to CPU or you can force CPU only decode manually in any half decent playback software (MPC-HC / VLC, etc). If fixed-function decoder stuff was that totally broken as some automatically 'assume', then billions of standalone DVD / Blu-Ray players, digital terrestrial / satellite / cable decoder boxes and mobile phones & tablets all wouldn't work for exactly the same reasons...

 

[DaveSimmons]

I was surprised and disappointed to see there aren't numbers for the 960 and 970 in Bench either.

Three GPUs, 0 benchmarks. I wish AT would do more than just add press releases to the site for new cards.