The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC 2GB Windforce
Our final card of the day is Gigabyte’s entry, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC 2GB. Like the other cards in today’s review this is a factory overclocked model, with Gigabyte shipping the core clock at 1033MHz, 107MHz (12%) over reference and the same overclock as Zotac. Meanwhile the memory clock is unchanged at 5.4GHz.
With the weakest factory overclock of the bunch, Gigabyte’s claim to fame here will be their design, which significantly deviates from NVIDIA’s reference design. The PCB itself is clearly based on NVIDIA’s (right down to the 5.75” length) and is otherwise unremarkable, but Gigabyte’s cooler is another Windforce 2X cooler, making it significant different from the much smaller open air coolers on the rest of the cards we’ve seen. Though the design of the cooler in use depends on the specific model of card, all of Gigabyte’s Windforce coolers share the same basic design, featuring a long aluminum heatsink that runs the length of the card (if not beyond), attached to the GPU through the use of copper heatpipes (2 in the case of the GTX 650 Ti).
Meanwhile air movement is provided by a pair of ridiculously large 100mm fans that run the length of the heatsink. In fact “ridiculously large” is about the single best two-word description there is for the GTX 650 Ti OC’s Windforce cooler. As we’ll see it’s going to be very effective, but in all likelihood it’s overkill out of the box. Because of the length (and significant overhang) of the Windforce cooler, Gigabyte’s card measures 9.3” long and you’ll need an extra inch of vertical clearance too to fit the behemoth.
Outside of cooling, Gigabyte’s card is otherwise very typical for a GTX 650 Ti. Gigabyte has equipped the card 2GB of Hynix 6GHz GDDR5, so when you overclock – and with a cooler this big you must – there is at a minimum a fair bit of memory headroom to play with. Meanwhile along with the minor PCB changes Gigabyte has changed the display ports to fit their needs. Gigabyte’s card uses a stacked DL-DVI-D design, augmenting that with a full-size HDMI port and a VGA port. With the increasing performance and ubiquity of iGPUs, VGA ports have finally started to fall out of favor, so Gigabyte is alone in shipping their card with a VGA port instead of a DVI-I to VGA dongle.
Rounding out the package is the usual collection of power adapters and a quick start guide. While it’s not included in the box or listed on the box, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC works with Gigabyte’s OC Guru II overclocking software, which is available on Gigabyte’s website. OC Guru isn’t quite up to the gold standard of overclocking software, but it’s functional, sleek, and gets the job done, which is great as with a cooler this large this card demands to be overclocked.
Wrapping things up, the Gigebyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC comes with Gigabyte’s standard 3 year warranty. Gigabyte will be releasing it at an MSRP of $174 ($169 without AC3), $25 over the price of a reference-clocked GTX 650 Ti and $5 less than the most expensive card in our roundup today.
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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.