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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M Mac Edition

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M Mac Edition: A Hybrid of the Past and Future for macOS Enthusiasts

April 2025

Introduction

Despite Apple's shift to its own M-series processors, the Intel-based Mac lineup is still used by millions. To cater to this audience, NVIDIA has released a special version of the graphics card — GeForce GTX 950M Mac Edition. This updated reincarnation of an old mobile GPU is adapted for modern tasks and macOS. In this article, we will explore who this card is suitable for in 2025 and what compromises it offers.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The GTX 950M Mac Edition is based on an upgraded Maxwell 2.0 platform, but with elements of Turing for partial support of modern APIs. This hybrid solution has allowed for a lower cost while maintaining compatibility with macOS Monterey and newer (via third-party patches).

Process Technology: 16 nm FinFET — outdated by 2025 standards, but sufficient for basic tasks.

Unique Features:

- OptiX Acceleration — rendering acceleration in applications like Blender.

- Partial DLSS 1.0 — limited support for AI upscaling through third-party mods.

- CUDA 5.2 — 640 cores for parallel computing.

The card does not support ray tracing and modern standards like FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0.

Memory: Balancing Budget and Performance

Type and Volume: 4 GB GDDR5 (not GDDR6) with a 128-bit bus. Bandwidth — 80 GB/s.

Performance Impact:

- For 2025 games at low settings in 1080p, this volume is sufficient, but high-resolution textures may cause FPS drops.

- In professional applications (e.g., DaVinci Resolve), 4 GB becomes a bottleneck when working with 4K footage.

Gaming Performance: Nostalgia with Caveats

The GTX 950M Mac Edition is designed for 1080p@30-60 FPS in games up to 2029. Examples (settings "Medium"):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (base version): 28-35 FPS (without ray tracing).

- Fortnite (Performance mode): 60-75 FPS.

- Counter-Strike 2: 90-120 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy (scaled down to 720p): 40-50 FPS.

Resolution Support:

- 1440p and 4K are not recommended — the card hits memory and computational power limits.

Professional Tasks: Minimum for Getting Started

Video Editing:

- Rendering in Premiere Pro is accelerated by 20-30% thanks to CUDA, but for H.265 10-bit 4K, activating backup rendering via the CPU is necessary.

3D Modeling:

- In Blender Cycles, rendering a medium-level scene takes about 15 minutes (compared to around 8 minutes with the RTX 3050).

Scientific Computing:

- OpenCL 1.2 support allows the card to be used in MATLAB or for machine learning on basic models, but speed is slower than that of modern APUs.

Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP: 60 Watts — this allows the card to be installed even in compact Mac mini or Hackintosh cases.

Cooling Recommendations:

- A system with 2 fans or liquid cooling is mandatory in closed cases.

- For stable operation in macOS, the Macs Fan Control utility is required for manual fan speed management.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon Pro 5500M (for Mac):

- Pros: 8 GB GDDR6, better optimization for Final Cut Pro.

- Cons: More expensive (~$300 compared to $200 for the GTX 950M Mac Edition).

Intel Arc A310 (Hackintosh builds):

- Pros: AV1 support, better performance in DX12.

- Cons: Drivers for macOS are unstable.

Conclusion: The GTX 950M Mac Edition is the choice for those who value compatibility with macOS and are not willing to pay extra for the Radeon Pro.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: A 300-350 Watt supply with an 80+ Bronze certification is sufficient. For Hackintosh, avoid units with unstable voltage (e.g., Aerocool KCAS).

Compatibility:

- macOS: Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma (Nvidia Web Driver patch required).

- Windows: works through Boot Camp, but drivers are only updated until 2024.

Drivers:

- Use version 471.96 for macOS — it is stable for OpenCL and CUDA.

- Avoid upgrading to macOS Sequoia — NVIDIA support is not guaranteed.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Price: $199 for a new card.

- Low power consumption.

- Compatibility with legacy Intel Macs.

Cons:

- Only 4 GB of memory.

- No support for ray tracing and DLSS 3+.

- Limited driver support period.

Final Conclusion: Who is the GTX 950M Mac Edition Suitable For?

This graphics card is a compromise for three categories of users:

1. Owners of old Intel Macs looking to prolong their device's life without overpaying for the Radeon Pro.

2. Students and novice editors who need basic performance for study and simple projects.

3. Hackintosh enthusiasts building budget systems for experimentation.

If you're willing to accept limitations in gaming and professional tasks, the GTX 950M Mac Edition can be a temporary solution. However, for serious work or modern AAA games, it’s better to consider cards that support RTX 40-series or to transition to the Apple Silicon platform.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

March 2015

Model Name

GeForce GTX 950M Mac Edition

Generation

GeForce 900M

Base Clock

993MHz

Boost Clock

1124MHz

Bus Interface

MXM-B (3.0)

Transistors

1,870 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

Maxwell

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

DDR3

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

900MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

28.80 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

17.98 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

44.96 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

44.96 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.468 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

640

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SMM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

75W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_0)

CUDA

5.0

Shader Model

5.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.468 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Graphics 448SP Mobile

1.581 +7.7%

Radeon HD 6850

1.518 +3.4%

GeForce GTX 950M Mac Edition

1.468

UHD Graphics 64EU

1.405 -4.3%

Quadro M2000M

1.377 -6.2%