The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun II
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite (on higher end hardware at least).
After the troubles it’s had in our earlier games, the GTX 650 Ti is improving its situation a bit here. Despite the limited amount of RAM on it, it still passes 60fps even at 1920. Furthermore the 7850’s lead has waned here, with the 7850 leading by only 23% at 1680 and an even smaller 15% at 1920. None the less this means the 7850 is covering the spread, which is not great news for NVIDIA.
At this point if it hasn’t become obvious, the 7850 is in its own class, much like the GTX 650 Ti sits above the 7700 in its own class. The GTX 650 Ti can’t win and it can barely tie; whether it’s a worthwhile card or not is going to depend on how close it can get to the 7850 given the price difference between the two.
As for our factory overclocked GTX 650 Ti cards, this time we see a full reversal of earlier trends with the EVGA card taking a lead, owing to its greater core overclock.
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chizow - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I guess in years past this may and probably should've been branded GTS 650Ti along with the GTS 650 (they've used GTS 250, GTS 450 etc in the past), but I know for a fact Nvidia is trying to establish GTX as its own brand for gamers.They really emphasize it with all this "Green Light" business with regard to overclocking, overvolting etc.
Blazorthon - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Nvidia has been cracking down on overvolting support, so IDK if I'd give them that much credit.Pneumothorax - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
That will make the price/performance gap even worse as the 7850 is an oc beast.goinginstyle - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
So why no reviews of the Asus or MSI offerings in these roundups?silverblue - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
You need to be sent a card in order to review it. ;)Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
The 7850 1GB is $150. It IS is the direct competitor to the 650 ti. You can speculate all you want about the 1GB being some sort of ephemeral limiting factor, but I dont see it. All I see is that in one game, at BEYOND 1080p resolution, memory becomes a factor. But if you look at it, you can see that it is still so very close on the bell curve. I bet that if you actually tested Skyrim at 1920x1080 (not 1920x1200), there would be much less difference between 2GB and 1GB.Even 2 years from now the 7850 1GB is going to be a better performer than the 650ti. Even with the "latest and greatest" games.
Shark321 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Where is the 7850 1GB $150?KineticHummus - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
yeah wish i could fine one of those haha. pretty sure there isnt a single card for 150Marlin1975 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
How about $159 AR shipped?http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
LordanSS - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I'm a bit curious about this card's performance with PhysX enabled games.Personally, I am a 6970 owner and thus have no access to PhysX effects on games, but there are many workarounds out there where you can add a nVidia card to your machine to compute the physics.
Borderlands 2 is an example, I know of people buying (cheap) nVidia cards so they can run physics on them. Problem is that, most of the time, these guys are buying really old or cheap hardware (like GT210 or 430 cards), causing a big drop in game performance. Others using more powerful (and expensive) cards, on the other hand, experience good results.
So I'm thinking what's the cutting point for performance here. I know it's an extremely niche endeavor, but if anyone has experience or thoughts, I'd be glad to hear them.