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 $10. And since most partners are using the same coolers for both their reference clocked and factory overclocked cards this makes choosing such a card a fairly easy process.
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Hades16x - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
A little bit saucy while reading this review on the page "Meet the Gigabyte Gefore GTX 650 TI OC 2GB Windforce" the second to last paragraph reads:"Rounding out the package is the usual collection of power adapters and a quick start guide. While it’s not included in the box or listed on the box, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC...."
Shouldn't that read "the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC" ?
Thanks for the review Ryan!
Hrel - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
First, card makers: If the card doesn't have FULL size HDMI, I won't even consider it. I get mini on smartphones, makes no damn sense on a GPU that goes into a 20lb desktop. Fuck everyone who does that. Second, Every display I own uses HDMI, most of them ONLY use HDMI. I want to see cards with 3 or 4 HDMI ports on them so I can run 3/4 displays without having to chain together a bunch of fucking adapters. HDMI or GTFO. I really don't understand why any other video cable even exists anymore, DVI is dumb and old, VGA, psh. Display Port? Never even seen it on a monitor/TV. I don't spend stupid amounts of money on stupid resolution displays where NO media is even produced at that resolution; but last I checked HDMI supports 8K video.Next: I bought my GTX460 for 130, or 135 bucks. This was a few months after it was released and with a rebate and weekend sale on newegg. Still, that card can MAX out every game I play at 1080p with no issues. I get that they're putting more RAM in the cards now, but that can't really justify more than a 10$ difference; of actual cost. I don't see the GTX660 EVER dropping down to 150 bucks or lower, WTF? Why is the GPU industry getting DRAMATICALLY more expensive and no one seems to be saying a thing? Remember the system RAM price fixing thing? Yeah, that sucked didn't it. I'd really hate to see that happen to GPU's.
It's good to finally see a tangible improvement in performance in GPU's. From GT8800 to GTX560 improvements were very incremental; seems like an actual gain has been achieved beyond just generational improvements. Hoping consoles have at least 2GB of GDDR5 and at least 4GB of DDR3 system RAM for next gen. Seems like RAM is becoming much more important, based on Skyrim. With that said, I can buy 8GB of system ram for like 30 or 40 bucks. Puts actual cost at a few dollars. No reason at all these cards/consoles can't have shit tons of RAM all over the damn place. RAM is cheap, doesn't cost anything anymore. You can charge 10 bucks/4GB and still turn a stupid profit. Do the right thing Microsoft/Nvidia and everyone else; put shit tons of RAM in AT COST. Make money on the GPU/Console/Games.
maximumGPU - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
we should all be pushing and asking for royalty-free display ports!and just so you'd know quite a few high end monitors don't have hdmi, the dell ultrasharp U2312hm comes to mind.
DP should be the standard.
Hrel - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
DP doesn't support audio, as far as I know. Also offers no advantage at all for video. So why?maximumGPU - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
It does support audio!with all else being equal the fact that it's royalty free means it's preferable to hdmi.
TheJian - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I'm not sure of physx in AC3, but yeah odd they put this in there. I would have figured a much cheaper game. When you factor in phsyx in games like Borderlands2 it changes the game quite a lot. You can interact with object in a way you can't on AMD:"One of the cool things about PhysX is that you can interact with these objects. In this screenshot we are firing a shot at the flag. The bullets go through the flag, causing it to blow a hole in the middle of it. After the actual flag tears apart, the entire string of flags fell down. This happens with flags and other cloth objects that are hanging around, the "Porta-John's" that are scattered across the world, blood and explosive objects. You can not destroy any of these objects without PhysX enabled on at least Medium. "
http://hardocp.com/article/2012/10/01/borderlands_...
I don't know why more sites don't talk about the physx stuff. I also like hardocp ALWAYS showing minimums as that is more important than anything else IMHO. I need to know a game is playable or not, not that it can hit 100fps here and there. Their graphs always show how LONG they stay low also. Much more useful info than a max fps shot in time (or even avg to me, I want min numbers). Anandtech only puts mins in where it makes an AMD look good it seems. Not sure other than that why they wouldn't include them in EVERY game with a graph like hardocp showing how long their there. If you read hardocp it's because they dip a lot, but maybe I'm just a cynic. At least they brought back SC2 :) Cuda is even starting to be used in games like just cause 2 (for water).
http://www.geforce.com/games-applications/pc-games...
Interesting :)
jtenorj - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
You can run medium physx on a radeon without much loss of performance.Magnus101 - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Why suddenly the race for 60 FPS?It used to be 30 FPS average and minimums not going under 18 in Crysis that was considered good.
Movies are at 24 FPS and stuttering isn't recognisable until you hit 16-17 FPS.
Pal TV in Europe was at 25 FPS.
It looks like everybody is buying into Carmacks 60 FPS mantra, which is insane.
For me minimums above 20 FPS is enough for a game to be perfectly playable.
This is the snobby debate with audiphiles all over again where they swear they can tell the difference between 96 and 44.1 khz, just substitue the samplerate with FPS.
But I guess the Nvidia and ATI are happy that you for no reason just raise the bar of acceptance!
ionis - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
60 FPS has been the target for the past 3-4 years. I'm happy with 25-30 but this min 30 ave 60 FPS target has been going on for quite a while now.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
You'll be happy until you play the same games on a cranked SB system with a high end capable videocard and an SSD (on a good low ping connection if multi).Until then you have no idea what you are missing. You're telling yourself there isn't more, but there is a lot, lot more.
Quality
Fluidity
Immersion
Perception in game
Precision
Timing
CONTROL of your game.
Yes it is snobby to anyone lower than whatever the snob build is - well, sort of, because the price to get there is not much at all really.
You may not need it, you may "be fine" with what you have, but there is exactly zero chance there is isn't a huge, huge difference.