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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saturn85 - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
great folding@home benchmark.Tchamber - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
At 1920x1200 2gb doesn't make a difference... so when does the extra memory come into play? Is it a resolution thing or a matter of having the cores to drive it?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
The extra memory is primarily for textures & buffers. Skyrim of course has its high res texture pack, and meanwhile you have deferred renderers like Battlefield 3 that create relatively large G-buffers, and larger buffers still if you want MSAA.ForeverAlone - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I don't really see why anyone would buy the 650.In the UK, the 6850/6870's are just a little bit more and massively outperform a 650.
CaedenV - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I was surprised that 1GB is really enough for most games. I figured that 2GB was overkill, but that something in the 1.2-1.5GB would show some added benefit to more games. Is there a utility that can show just how much Ram is being used by these titles so that we know how close we are to that 1GB ceiling on most games?I think with the new consoles coming out next year, having that extra Ram on the GPU will be important for people who do not upgrade often. The new consoles should push developers to add much higher resolution textures, as well as having more variety of textures for their environments, which will no doubt push cards past that 1GB mark.
maximumGPU - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - link
MSI Afterburner can show you gpu ram usage.Leyawiin - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
Yes, I know the HD 7850 is a better value, so I'll get that out of the way. Still, the GTX 650 Ti with its tiny size, low power consumption and quiet operation would be great for a SFF project. Performs about on par with a GTX 560 and that's fine for 1080p gaming at good quality levels.bernlin2000 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
It's a bit silly, some of the analysis of these benchmarks. Frankly, any performance above 50 fps average is fantastic, and comparing cards above those numbers is pointless: they're all going to play those games well and nobody notices the difference between 60 and 120 fps. Saying that the GTX 650 Ti (which I just ordered) "doesn't fair particularly well" on Skyrim, when at 1650x1050 it's running at 88.8 fps is just madness. That's with the high resolution textures too? Talk about unnecessary criticism!ajay799 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
i bought a MSI R7770-PMD1GD5 and its like almost silent in idle ... my 3.5 HDD is louder... and even under load its really quiet so i dont get these noise levels from the test besides one of my friends has a HD6850 and under load that sounds like a freaking jet absolutely terrible like my old GTX260 ... compared to the HD7770 thats like night and dayid say these measurements are way off...
Mooseparade - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I bought a Galaxy GTX 650 Ti 1gb for a budget build ($129 - $20 rebate) and it won't even hit 1050mhz core clock. This thing is very dissapointing