The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe 2GB Question & The Test
If it seems to like 1GB+ video cards have been common for ages now, you wouldn’t be too far off. 1GB cards effectively became mainstream in 2008 with the release of the 1GB Radeon HD 4870, which was followed by 2GB cards pushing out 1GB cards as the common capacity for high-end cards in 2010 with the release of the Radeon HD 6970. Since then 2GB cards have been trickling down AMD and NVIDIA’s product stacks while at the same time iGPUs have been making the bottoms of those stacks redundant.
For this generation AMD decided to make their cutoff the 7800 series earlier this year; the 7700 series would be 1GB by default, while the 7800 series and above would be 2GB or more. AMD has since introduced the 7850 1GB as a niche product (in large part to combat the GTX 650 Ti), but the 7850 is still predominantly a 2GB card. For NVIDIA on the other hand the line is being drawn between the GTX 660 and GTX 650; the GTX 660 is entirely 2GB, while the GTX 650 and GTX 650 Ti are predominantly 1GB cards with some 2GB cards mixed in as a luxury option.
The reason we bring this up is because while this is very clear from a video card family perspective, it doesn’t really address performance expectations. Simply put, at what point does a 2GB card become appropriate? When AMD or NVIDIA move a whole product line the decision is made for you, but when you’re looking at a split product like the GTX 650 Ti or the 7850 then the decision is up to the buyer and it’s not always an easy decision.
To try to help with that decision, we’ve broken down the performance of several games on both cards with both 1GB and 2GB models, listing the performance of 2GB cards relative to 1GB cards. By looking for performance advantages, we can hopefully better quantify the benefits of a 2GB card.
Regardless of whether we’re looking at AMD or NVIDIA cards, there’s only one benchmark where 2GB cards have a clear lead: Skyrim at 1920 with the high resolution texture pack. For our other 9 games the performance difference is miniscule at best.
But despite the open-and-shut nature of our data we’re not ready to put our weight behind these results. Among other issues, our benchmark suite is approaching a year old now, which means it doesn’t reflect on some of the major games released in the past few months such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 2, DiRT: Showdown, or for that matter any one of the number of games left to be released this year. While we have full confidence in our benchmark suite from a competitive performance perspective, the fact that it’s not forward looking (and mostly forward rendering) does a disservice to measuring the need for additional memory.
The fact of the matter is that while the benchmarks don’t necessarily show it, along with Skyrim we’ve seen Crysis clobber 1GB cards in the past, Shogun II’s highest settings won’t even run on a 1GB card, and at meanwhile Battlefield 3 scales up render distance with available video memory. Nearly half of our benchmark games do benefit from 2GB cards, a subjective but important quality.
So despite the fact that our data doesn’t immediately show the benefits of 2GB cards, our thoughts go in the other direction. As 2012 comes to a close, cards that can hit the GTX 650 Ti’s performance level are not well equipped for future with only 1GB of VRAM. 1GB is the cheaper option – and at these prices every penny counts – but it is our belief that by this time next year 1GB cards will be in the same place 512MB cards were in 2010: bottlenecked by a lack of VRAM. We have reached that point where if you’re going to be spending $150 or more that you shouldn’t be settling for a 1GB card; this is the time where 2GB cards are going to become the minimum for performance gaming video cards.
The Test
NVIDIA’s GTX 650 Ti launch driver is 306.38, which are a further continuation of the 304.xx branch. Compared to the previous two 304.xx drivers there are no notable performance changes or bug fixes that we’re aware of.
Meanwhile on the AMD side we’re using AMD’s newly released 12.9 betas. While these drivers are from a new branch, compared to the older 12.7 drivers the performance gains are minimal. We have updated our results for our 7000 series cards, but the only difference as it pertains to our test suite is that performance in Shogun II and DiRT 3 is slightly higher than with the 12.7 drivers.
On a final note, AMD sent over XFX’s Radeon HD 7850 1GB card so that we had a 1GB 7850 to test with (thanks guys). As this is not a new part from a performance perspective (see above) we’re not doing anything special with this card beyond including it in our charts as validation of the fact that the 1GB and 2GB 7850s are nearly identical outside of Skyrim.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Monitor: | Samsung 305T |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon HD 7850 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 305.37 NVIDIA ForceWare 306.23 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 306.38 Beta AMD Catalyst 12.9 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
91 Comments
View All Comments
Galidou - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - link
I won't be back on that thread anymore but just wait for some more stupidly stubborn reply of Cerise, that guy is just a show by himself. His level of global consiousness is below anything I have yet to see in the whole world.Sure he has some knowledge, can't deny it, it's just used in a way that seems like all that potential is totally WASTED, thrown to the garbage, buried in vomit and so on.....
Funniest shit ever.... LOL funniest comments ever..... Can't beleive it.....
Speelteveel - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - link
Please provide these benchmarks where the oc'd 650ti "flies" past the 7850.Its not a 50 buck price diff, its 20.
Also, in these benches above, the 7850 is not overclocked.
So basically, you advocate to pay $20 less for a card that you have to overclock to get similiar performance, when the $20 more expensive card when oc'd goes into another spectrum of perfomrnace that the 650ti can't even fathom. Oc'd 7850s break even with 7870 benchmarks at 1080p.
I'm not going to link you the benchmarks you can peruse google y yourself.
the 650ti can't compare to the 7850 at all. I'm no fanboy, I just found your post dissing fanboys while blatantly being blindly biased very amusing.
vbmluis - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
Yeah, I remember one, ATi HD 2900, heavy, big, noisy, power hungry, pricey and low performance.Jamahl - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
It's not bad. It's just slow, expensive and late.Samus - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
lol, that defines bad, man!But I'd argue...the only thing really wrong with this card is there isn't any good reason or it to be dual slot. with that power envelope, nVidia really could have rocked the house if this thing were a single slot, maybe even half height card (especially the 650 non-TI) because it's make a very powerful USFF/ITX PC GPU.
Aside form my dream of this card being single slot, it isn't a terrible card. The 650 Ti is mostly on par with the old 560 (which still costs more) while using less power and being half the length. Pretty much a no-brainer which one to buy there. But neither card is really worth $150-$180 when you consider you get substantially more (25-40%) performance from the 660 for just 20% more monies.
Blazorthon - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Don't forget, the 7850 comes with games and so does the 7770. Coming with a game is necessary just to compete right now. The 7770 also has some highly factory overclocked models that can inch out the 650 Ti while still being cheaper. The 650 Ti 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.TheJian - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Love defending AMD everywhere you go don't you :)Until you OC the 650 (or buy one already done, you act like they don't sell them on both sides OC'd) making your point moot. No phsyx either.
http://www.geforce.com/games-applications/physx
Even batman AA supports it. I don't think the 7770 comes with a current AAA title such as Assassins Creed 3 (doesn't get any more current than a game NOT even out yet). That will make a nice xmas gift to themselves for anyone buying one. Metacritic has a date of Nov20th, which is plenty of time for them to even be late a few weeks an still play over the holidays.
I'd be more than happy to have another round like we did at Toms if you'd like :) You start claiming MSAA crap again and we'll have a go...LOL
Please refrain from saying AMD is financially competitive with Intel here like over at Tom's, I don't want to waste my time burying that one again...ROFL.
abianand - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I have a slight preference from AMD cards (I don't why and I don't like having a slight preference between two equally and fairly-competing brands).Having said that....
7850 is definitely faster, but look at the power consumption of the 650Ti. Even an overclocked 650Ti draws power that just equals a normal non-overclocked 7850. So, I wouldn't call the 650Ti a bad product at all, especially when it manages to touch 30fps in almost all settings in almost all games.
Samus - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I have a preference for nVidia drivers, but these days both companies make solid chips. The real problem for AMD is all the games I play (mostly EA games) are optimized for nVidia architecture...like how Source was optimized for ATI architecture.Just how it goes.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
"Until you OC the 650 (or buy one already done, you act like they don't sell them on both sides OC'd) making your point moot."Wait, so you can't OC AMD cards? Oh that's right, you can. So that is meaningless, as any OC gains from Nvidia cards will be (likely) negated by OCing the respective AMD cards.