The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Although none of NVIDIA’s partners will be selling direct copies of the NVIDIA reference design, NVIDIA did send over one of reference cards to serve as a baseline comparison (as it turns out, due to a bug you can’t underclock a GTX 650 Ti right now). Since most partner designs will closely follow NVIDIA’s reference design this actually works out for the best anyhow, as it offers a good insight into the kind of performance and design baseline we should see.
For the GeForce 600 series NVIDIA’s reference designs have been extremely solid (overclocking withstanding) and the reference GTX 650 Ti continues that tradition. The PCB itself is actually lifted from the GTX 650, which despite the difference in GPUs is pin-compatible with the GTX 650 Ti and its 128bit memory bus. This puts the length of the card at 5.75” – about as short as a PCIe x16 card can be – in a full-profile form factor. Meanwhile though taking inventory of every last electrical component isn’t practical, as near as we can tell the PCB and its components are completely identical to the reference GTX 650, which means partners are going to be able to easily drop the GTX 650 Ti into their existing GTX 650 designs so long as their cooling is adequate.
Speaking of cooling, the cooler on the reference GTX 650 Ti is a small but effective open air double-wide cooler. NVIDIA’s using a low-profile aluminum heatsink that covers roughly half the card, topped with an 80mm fan. This is the cooler style that most partners will mimic, as the 110W TDP of the GTX 650 Ti does not require a particularly large cooler; though on that note at 110W passive cooling is unlikely. As is common with open air coolers, the heatsink itself doesn’t make contact with the on-board RAM, so RAM cooling is left to airflow coming off of the fan.
NVIDIA’s RAM of choice for the GTX 650 Ti is their traditional favorite, Hynix 2Gb 6GHz GDDR5. The use of 6GHz RAM, which will be common across this family, means that the GTX 650 Ti will have some memory overclocking headroom right out of the box, memory bus willing. NVIDIA uses 4 pieces of it in a 4x32bit configuration, with 4 more pads on the back of the card for another 4 pieces for 2GB cards.
Moving on, along with losing GPU boost capabilities the GTX 650 family also gives up SLI capabilities, so unlike the GTX 550 Ti you won’t find a SLI bridge connector here. What you will find is 1 6pin PCIe power socket on the rear of the card for providing the extra power the GTX 650 needs. Meanwhile display connectivity is provided by 1 DL-DVI-I port, 1 DL-DVI-D port, and a mini-HDMI port. Since all of the Kepler GPUs support 4 displays the GTX 650 Ti can drive up to 3 displays via these connectors, and if a partner equips a card with a DisplayPort connector instead it should be possible to drive the full 4 displays off of a single GTX 650 Ti.
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CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
Oh there's the amd fanboy bloviating spew I predicted above you responded to ! LOL I cannot frikkin believe it, I got it exactly correct without looking ! Here I will FTFamd fanboy" Don't forget, the 650Ti comes with a game and so does the 560Ti. Coming with a game is necessary just to compete right now. The 460 also has some highly factory overclocked models that can smash out the 7770 while still being cheaper. The 7850 would do better at $10 or $20 lower and a MIR is a great way to accomplish that since a lot of people forget to do them anyway, but buy the card because of the after MIR price. ( I love ripoff MIR because I am an idiot shining on for corpo pig profits I hate so much).
ionis - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
2 of the 17 2GB 7850s on newegg comes with a game. I didn't bother checking the 1GB, b/c who cares about the 1GB? To say they comes with a game is a bit disingenuous.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
It's okay all the amd fanboys can get the lowest low down 1GB now at the cited lowdown more expensive price, that doesn't matter when they are making their arguments for amd fanboyism.Two seconds later they will be screaming the 7850 is future proof with 2g ram so F orget the 650Ti, it is also the best deal againbecause amd roxxors.
So 1gb price, and magically in the deranged gourd of the amd fanboy 2G card is futureproof.
That is the amd fanboy brain after it exited the blender 20 years ago.
Galidou - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - link
The 7850 is a better choice for one freaking big reason you Cerise wouldn't be able to see because you're blinded with green glasses. When you buy a 7850 you always have the choice to go crossfire in the future which is something that happens often in the enthusiast world.Usually GTX is branded for the enthusiast market and reffered as the better cards from Nvidia but hey, where is my SLI connector? Oh... there's none... they had to cut it for cost purposes, that's what Nvidia claims..... First time in history a GTX card comes without one... you're so stubborn you can't even see any downside when they're OBVIOUS..... HELL even half of the radeon 7770 comes with Crossfire support and some of them costs 120$...
nathanddrews - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I see what you did there...Denithor - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I caught that too. Thought it was cute but kinda silly.Wonder how much of the target audience got it?
Exodite - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I'd wager most of the AT readers passed middle school chemistry. :PPaulman - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Exodite is right. Also, nerds love memorizing trivia (and the periodic table definitely counts).CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I'll wager if that's minimally true we've got a dumber group than the general populace.Since the idiots group think yours was a great line, the above may in fact be the case.
chizow - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
As indicated in the review, the 650Ti fills the huge gap in performance between the 7850/GTX 660 and 7770/GTX 650, its price just needs to be adjusted in light of AMD's pre-emptive cuts on the 7850. Once we start seeing ~$20 rebates similar to those we see for the 7850, the 650Ti should be a more appealing option in the sub-$150 range.I also think Nvidia missed an opportunity here by turning off Boost for sub-660 parts. It's just inconsistent with the rest of the Kepler line and while it allows partners to benefit on OC parts, they are clearly charging an additional premium instead of offering it at MSRP like past parts such as EVGA FPB.
Most interesting to me seeing how these bandwidth neutered parts perform is how shading/backend performance has caught up and is generally no longer the biggest bottleneck; bandwidth tends to hold these cards back more often than not compared to their bigger siblings even at modest resolutions like 1080p.