The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTStarcraft II
Our next game is Starcraft II, Blizzard’s 2010 RTS megahit. Much like Portal 2 it’s a DX9 game designed to run on a wide range of hardware so performance is quite peppy with most high-end cards, but it can still challenge a GPU when it needs to.
As opposed to Battlefield 3, Starcraft II is light enough that the GTX 650 Ti can generally get away with 1920x1200, even with MSAA. It isn’t 60fps, but for a RTS it’s good enough. The bad news from this view is that while the GTX 650 Ti falls short of 60fps the 7850 can blow past it. Otherwise at 1680x1050 without MSAA we see something similar to Batman, where the GTX 650 Ti hangs with the 7850 as these lower settings do not penalize the GTX 650 Ti’s lack of ROP throughput and memory bandwidth nearly as hard.
Meanwhile the factory overclocked cards see the typical performance gains. Without memory bandwidth being hit so hard, it’s the EVGA card and its top core overclock that edges out the others. Notably, all 3 can just hit 60fps at 1920.
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saturn85 - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
great folding@home benchmark.Tchamber - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
At 1920x1200 2gb doesn't make a difference... so when does the extra memory come into play? Is it a resolution thing or a matter of having the cores to drive it?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
The extra memory is primarily for textures & buffers. Skyrim of course has its high res texture pack, and meanwhile you have deferred renderers like Battlefield 3 that create relatively large G-buffers, and larger buffers still if you want MSAA.ForeverAlone - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I don't really see why anyone would buy the 650.In the UK, the 6850/6870's are just a little bit more and massively outperform a 650.
CaedenV - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I was surprised that 1GB is really enough for most games. I figured that 2GB was overkill, but that something in the 1.2-1.5GB would show some added benefit to more games. Is there a utility that can show just how much Ram is being used by these titles so that we know how close we are to that 1GB ceiling on most games?I think with the new consoles coming out next year, having that extra Ram on the GPU will be important for people who do not upgrade often. The new consoles should push developers to add much higher resolution textures, as well as having more variety of textures for their environments, which will no doubt push cards past that 1GB mark.
maximumGPU - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - link
MSI Afterburner can show you gpu ram usage.Leyawiin - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
Yes, I know the HD 7850 is a better value, so I'll get that out of the way. Still, the GTX 650 Ti with its tiny size, low power consumption and quiet operation would be great for a SFF project. Performs about on par with a GTX 560 and that's fine for 1080p gaming at good quality levels.bernlin2000 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
It's a bit silly, some of the analysis of these benchmarks. Frankly, any performance above 50 fps average is fantastic, and comparing cards above those numbers is pointless: they're all going to play those games well and nobody notices the difference between 60 and 120 fps. Saying that the GTX 650 Ti (which I just ordered) "doesn't fair particularly well" on Skyrim, when at 1650x1050 it's running at 88.8 fps is just madness. That's with the high resolution textures too? Talk about unnecessary criticism!ajay799 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
i bought a MSI R7770-PMD1GD5 and its like almost silent in idle ... my 3.5 HDD is louder... and even under load its really quiet so i dont get these noise levels from the test besides one of my friends has a HD6850 and under load that sounds like a freaking jet absolutely terrible like my old GTX260 ... compared to the HD7770 thats like night and dayid say these measurements are way off...
Mooseparade - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I bought a Galaxy GTX 650 Ti 1gb for a budget build ($129 - $20 rebate) and it won't even hit 1050mhz core clock. This thing is very dissapointing