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 $5 less than the most expensive card in our roundup today.
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Hades16x - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
A little bit saucy while reading this review on the page "Meet the Gigabyte Gefore GTX 650 TI OC 2GB Windforce" the second to last paragraph reads:"Rounding out the package is the usual collection of power adapters and a quick start guide. While it’s not included in the box or listed on the box, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC...."
Shouldn't that read "the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC" ?
Thanks for the review Ryan!
Hrel - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
First, card makers: If the card doesn't have FULL size HDMI, I won't even consider it. I get mini on smartphones, makes no damn sense on a GPU that goes into a 20lb desktop. Fuck everyone who does that. Second, Every display I own uses HDMI, most of them ONLY use HDMI. I want to see cards with 3 or 4 HDMI ports on them so I can run 3/4 displays without having to chain together a bunch of fucking adapters. HDMI or GTFO. I really don't understand why any other video cable even exists anymore, DVI is dumb and old, VGA, psh. Display Port? Never even seen it on a monitor/TV. I don't spend stupid amounts of money on stupid resolution displays where NO media is even produced at that resolution; but last I checked HDMI supports 8K video.Next: I bought my GTX460 for 130, or 135 bucks. This was a few months after it was released and with a rebate and weekend sale on newegg. Still, that card can MAX out every game I play at 1080p with no issues. I get that they're putting more RAM in the cards now, but that can't really justify more than a 10$ 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.