The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
With every launch of a GeForce 600 series card NVIDIA has had a specific market target in mind. Typically those targets intersect or undercut an AMD market, and while AMD has not been caught off-guard with subsequent launches like they were the launch of the GTX 680, NVIDIA has so far managed to stay on equal or better footing as AMD. Or at least that was the case until today with the launch of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti.
To be clear, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti as it’s configured does not have a direct competitor, and this is something NVIDIA specifically planned for. At $149 it’s squeezed in between the Radeon HD 7770 and the Radeon HD 7850, which happens to be a rather wide performance gap. Under normal circumstances this would be a very good plan, as it means NVIDIA can tap a market segment that AMD wasn’t adequately serving before, while at the same time direct avoiding competition with AMD. But such a plan relies on AMD not making an aggressive move in return.
To that end if AMD had done nothing we would be talking about how the GTX 650 Ti is an excellent fit for the market at $150, and a solid step up from its predecessor the GTX 550 Ti. Instead AMD and their partners executed on the Radeon HD 7850 not a price cut, chopping $20 off of the price of a Radeon HD 7850 and bringing out further 1GB models to bolster their closest GTX 650 Ti competitor. So often we talk about the significance of $20 in the sub-$200 market, and this is another one of those cases.
The fact of the matter is that from a price/performance perspective the $149 GTX 650 Ti 1GB is not competitive enough with the $169 Radeon HD 7850 1GB. At its best the GTX 650 Ti can match the 7850, and at its worse it can only keep up with a 7770. The end result is that most of the time the GTX 650 Ti is going to lose to the 7850 by more than the 13% price difference between the two, which means that NVIDIA is coming up short even if they are the cheaper option.
Instead we fall back to that old maxim, “there’s no such thing as a bad product, only a bad price”. For the GTX 650 Ti to be a competitive success it needs to come down in price in response to the lower price of the 7850. The fact that NVIDIA added an Assassin’s Creed III bundle is likely an attempt to subvert a proper price cut, and while we’re big fans of game bundles it’s not the same as a price cut. If NVIDIA could cut even $10 off of the price of the GTX 650 Ti they could escape the 7850’s shadow and at the same time return the favor to AMD by putting pressure on the 7770. As it stands today the GTX 650 Ti only makes real sense for buyers who absolutely cannot go over $149, and they’re going to have to give up a lot of performance as a result.
Ultimately, to NVIDIA’s credit the GTX 650 Ti is a perfectly competent card at 1680x1050, which is right where you’d expect a 650 series part to be. The performance is right for that segment and the power consumption taken in light of the 7850 is very impressive. But AMD rules from the price/performance perspective, and in the meantime that power advantage just isn’t enough when both cards are sub-150W cards. As we’ve seen time and time again, and as the last thing we’ll see in 2012, when it comes to mainstream cards $20 makes all the difference in the world. For NVIDIA it’s the sole reason that Ti is not Au.
Finally, let’s talk about our factory overclocked retail cards for a bit. With the exception of the Gigabyte Windforce card, most of these retail cards are going to go with designs similar to the NVIDIA reference design, and accordingly they’re going to perform similarly. This is not a bad thing as the NVIDIA reference design is quite good, but it does make life a bit harder for NVIDIA’s partners as they have to compete on non-benchmark attributes like software and warranties as opposed to raw performance.
The biggest problem the partners will face is that while their factory overclocked cards are a good 10%+ faster than reference clocked cards, they’re running headlong into that $169/$189 wall imposed by the 7850. The added performance gets neutralized by the added cost, keeping them on the same price/performance curve as the reference clocked GTX 650 Ti. The end result is that while the factory overclocked cards we’ve looked at today are worth the premium, buyers are still better off with (and are now closer to) the 7850.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that not every partner will make their factory overclocked SKUs available in both a 1GB version and a 2GB version, of all the cards we’ve looked at there is a clear winner in Zotac’s GeForce GTX 650 Ti AMP! 2GB card. It has the best balance of power consumption, temperature, and noise under both stock and overclocked conditions, plus it has one of the best overclocks; all of which is enough to justify the $10 price premium over a standard 2GB card. Gigabyte’s card also looks interesting due to the sheer size of the Windforce cooler, though in our experience a manual fan curve might be necessary to find the best balance between noise and temperature, as the card shouldn’t need to get that loud to keep up with the relatively low power consumption of the GTX 650 Ti GPU.
Of course all of these projections are made with respect to stock performance. If our results are anywhere close to what other retail cards do – and we believe they are – then overclocking is going to be extremely similar across all cards, regardless of a factory overclock or not. For buyers who do intend to overclock it’s a safe bet to say that they’d best be served by an at-MSRP reference clocked card, where they can achieve the same impressive results while pocketing the extra $10. And since most partners are using the same coolers for both their reference clocked and factory overclocked cards this makes choosing such a card a fairly easy process.
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SodaAnt - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Why is it that all the manufacturers seem to have the need to put two huge fans and heatsinks on a GPU that only has a TDP of 110W? I mean, I can see having that on a GTX 680 or something, it needs it, but why bother on a low end card? You're just adding price for what is pretty much looks.Shark321 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Chip cooling results usually in high noise, so I'm glad they put large heatsinks on the 650 Ti.Blazorthon - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
The 650 Ti has some of the lowest noise and temp results of any graphics card in its class. Those large coolers are definitely beneficial, not that I wouldn't mind seeing some single slot 650 Ti models.MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
"But as it stands today the GTX 650 Ti only makes real sense for buyers who absolutely cannot go over $149"If said buyer can't add another 20$ he probably shouldn't be spending his money on a video card at all.
TheJian - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
You can say that at any price...LOL. Everyone's budget is different. The 660TI really only makes sense for someone who can't spend another $100 on a 670...And then you chime in with your comment again...Both comments are pointless. Ryan puts crap like that in to disparage NV in every article. At $149 it comes with AC3 a AAA title not even released yet, arguably the card is only $120. Unless you think you'll be able to get AC3 for the price of $30 the day it hits. I doubt it. Probably $45-60. So quite a good deal for someone wanting AC3 and only having $150 correct? Pull your head out Ryan. :) Quit making bias comments like this. It's amazing they even give you a AAA title at $150 range.If some kid's been saving his allowance for ages and finally has $150, to replace his old X card it makes total sense. Same for any adult. These cards are for people who don't have $200 etc. No point in making any comment like ryan did.
And at 1680x1050, where most of these users will run this card it doesn't lose much. He keeps quoting cards above where they should run. $100-150 cards are not for 1920x1200. You'll be turning stuff down all day, thus not giving you what the devs wanted you to play. Just like the 660TI/7950 isn't for 2560x1600 either. He keeps using this crap to bash NV cards. This is why he leaves out minimums on almost everything. If he showed those #'s you'd see you can't even play there with these. $300 is for 1920x1200, $450+ is comfortable at above this, $150 is solidly 1680x1050 when MINIMUMS are looked at with max details. If you're not running with all the goodies on, you're not running what the dev wanted you to play. You're missing the FULL experience. 2560x1600 was unplayable on 3/4 games at hardocp on 7950B/660TI. So why talk about those two in the same sentence with 2560x1600? It's DUMB. Two of the games hit 15/17fps on both cards...LOL. That's a freaking slide show FFS. He bashes NV all day over bandwidth for UNPLAYABLE SETTINGS on both cards in those cases. I'd say he doesn't get it, but he does, he knows exactly what he's doing. He loves AMD or they give him something for the love ;) I really don't care who wins at 15fps settings, and neither should ANY of us. They had games where the drop was 100 to 22-26fps on 7950 from max to min...But as long as ryan evades minimums in games he can quote AMD in a better light...LOL.
jtenorj - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I don't know if experiencing all the developer intended matters as much as simply enjoying the game. The cheapest you can get a "modern" console(not counting the wii) is like 100 bucks for a 360 with a contract for xbox live. If you already have a decent computer from the last few years with crap graphics, you can drop in a 100 dollar(or less) HD7750, overclock it some, and blow away any console's graphics at 1080p by using medium pc settings. If you up the budget a bit to the HD7770 and overclock, you could even manage high settings at 1080p with playable frame rates. If you want to see minimum frame rates, you can go to other sites like hardocp(as mentioned, though it doesn't seem like they have a review up for gtx650ti...yet). Even better is techreport for testing of individual frame times that can catch latency spikes a minimum frame rate measure might miss.justaviking - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Eventually you have to draw the line somewhere.Start with a budget of $100...
$100? Why not spend $120?
$120? Why not spend $140?
$140? Why not spend $160?
$160? Why not spend $180?
$180? Why not spend $200?
Why not spend $200? Because you started with a $100 budget.
It's not always that you "can't" spend another $20, but most people have to draw the line somewhere. For some people it's $300, others it's $150. Besides, the person spending $150 might have started with a target of $125, and has already "shopped up" to the $150 mark.
This works in the opposite direction too. Why not SAVE $20 and get a cheaper product if it has "almost" the same performance? Then why not save another $20, and so on? Soon you'll be hopelessly underpowered.
That's the sweet agony of shopping for parts like this. There is such a spectrum of price/performance options that you are always near a 2nd or 3rd option. If there was simply one AMD card and one Nvidia card at $100-200-300-400-500 price points, it sure would be a lot easier to go shopping. But what would be the sport in that?
johnsonjohnson - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Looks like it's gonna have to be the 7850 then. Time to finally retire that 4830...EnzoFX - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Sorry if I missed it, but this is often not discussed. This is something I cannot stand in lower end cards. Fixed speed fans. They are annoying usually. Then again, I usually swap out the cooler. I'm otherwise all for shorter cards.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Yes, it has variable fan speeds. In fact none of the GeForce 600 cards we've reviewed (including the 640) have a fixed fan speed.