The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA

DiRT 3

For racing games our racer of choice continues to be DiRT, which is now in its 3rd iteration. Codemasters uses the same EGO engine between its DiRT, F1, and GRID series, so the performance of EGO has been relevant for a number of racing games over the years.

On an absolute basis, the GTX 650 Ti does well enough here, keeping the average framerate above 60fps even at the 1920x1200, a resolution it would typically have trouble with. But on a competitive basis this is another struggle for the GTX 650 Ti, as the 7850 passes it by 33%. Adding insult to injury, the 7770 – a card not even in the same league as the GTX 650 Ti – only trails the GTX 650 Ti by 10%.

Meanwhile the factory overclocked cards can help to close the gap, but at the same time their higher prices serve to erode the GTX 650 Ti’s price advantage. Once more all of these cards are close, with the Zotac edging out the rest.

Looking at minimum framerates it’s a similar scenario as with the average framerates. The 7850 is well in the lead, though at 1680 the GTX 650 Ti is hitting minimum framerates above 60fps. Interestingly the ordering of our factory overclocked cards changes slightly; the EVGA card and its top factory overclock now edge out Zotac and Gigabyte, giving us a game where Zotac’s memory overclock isn’t enough to overtake a larger core overclock.