In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 are massively better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition.

The GeForce GTX 1080 has a 531 MHz higher core clock speed and 112 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 950. This results in the GeForce GTX 1080 providing 205.5 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GTX 1080 has a 531 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Render Output Units than the GTX 950. This results in the GeForce GTX 1080 providing 68.4 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GTX 1080 was released less than a year after the GTX 950, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The GeForce GTX 1080 has 6144 MB more video memory than the GTX 950, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GeForce GTX 1080 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GeForce GTX 1080 has 214.5 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 950, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GTX 1080 is massively better than the GTX 950.

The GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition has 768 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 1080 has 2560. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 950 is 1299 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 1080 is 5989. The GeForce GTX 1080 having 4690 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce GTX 1080 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 950.

The GeForce GTX 1080 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 950. This means that the GeForce GTX 1080 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 950.

The GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition requires 75 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 1080 requires 180 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the GTX 950 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GeForce GTX 1080. The GeForce GTX 1080 requires 105 Watts more than the GTX 950 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GeForce GTX 1080 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 950.