GTX 950 (probably) coming this Thursday with a $160 price tag

And the older GTX 650-one of the most popular graphics cards among Steam users-is starting to get long in the tooth. So all the info is here, and now all we have to do is wait for the new GTX 950 to hit the stores.

Although lately the new card has appeared in a series of constant leaks that detail its technological specs, now more concrete info about the GPU used and memory availability have surfaced. The report didn’t mention a price, however, but given the fact that the 950 is positioned as the middle-of-the-road option right between the $200 Dollars GeForce GTX 960 and the $150 GTX 750ti, it stands to reason that the price will also fall somewhere in the middle of that range. This type of card can handle most video games with relative ease. That bevy of leaks included ASUS STRIX GTX 950 pictures, premature retailer listings and product/box shots of a PNY GTX 950. Another offering in the segment will make life harder for AMD, but will unlikely translate into significantly higher sales for Nvidia. Keep in mind that ports can vary between card models as well.

It’s pretty obvious that the GTX 950 Ti is set to fill the relatively large performance gap between the GTX 960 and soon-to-release GTX 950 – all three of which are based on the GM206 GPU. The memory clock speed remains untouched, though you can use EVGA’s superb PrecisionX overclocking software to give the card’s GPU and memory even more pep in their steps.

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 GTX 950 SSC boasts EVGA’s ACX 2.0 cooling system, which we’ve seen used to great effect before with the GTX 960 and various other GPUs. Rather than diving into nitty-gritty details about ACX 2.0’s triple 8mm straight heat pipes and double ball bearings again, here’s a high-level look at the system.

Next page: Gaming benchmarks and testbed configuration details.