NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Review: Bringing Balance To The Force
by Ryan Smith on March 26, 2013 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Bringing this review to a close, given the back-to-back launches of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost and the Radeon HD 7790, our first instinct is to frame the GTX 650 Ti Boost in reference to the 7790. Indeed the GTX 650 Ti Boost will be NVIDIA’s 7790 competitor, but what we’re reviewed – a 2GB GTX 650 Ti Boost – is not the same as the 1GB card that will occupy that $149 price point. So we want to hold off on that comparison for a bit. We need to see a 1GB GTX 650 Ti Boost to properly make that evaluation.
When we opened this article we mentioned how there’s practically a card at every $10 between $100 and $200. For consumers on a fixed budget this is great since it means there’s a video card at every price, but without distinct islands it makes it harder for us as reviewers to make a recommendation. But as always we’ll take a stab at it.
In our 7790 review we mentioned how uneasy we are with 1GB cards right now due to the fact that larger cards have been on the market for some number of years by now, and game consoles are about to take a massive leap in RAM capacities. Of course neither AMD nor NVIDIA is going to offer a balanced 2GB card at $149 right now – what you can have is a 1GB 7790 or a 1GB GTX 650 Ti Boost. So with that said we’re going to hold to our earlier recommendation that if you’re in the market for a card around these price ranges and you can afford to go past $149, we’re at a point where a 2GB card is a reasonable investment. And to that end the 2GB GTX 650 Ti Boost is going to be $10-$15 cheaper than the 2GB 7850, making it the more affordable option for a 2GB card.
Moving along, with the chief competitor for the 1GB GTX 650 Ti Boost being the recently launched Radeon HD 7790, the chief competitor for the 2GB version is going to be AMD’s Radeon HD 7850 2GB. The GeForce card will have a $10-$15 price advantage on average, keeping in mind that the price of the 7850 is typically in flux due to price changes and temporary rebates.
The performance of the two cards is close at times, but ultimately the GTX 650 Ti Boost spends most of its time trailing the 7850 to some degree, its only lead being in Battlefield 3. With those BF3 results pushing the cards to within 5% of each other on average, otherwise the gap is closer to 8%. As such the GTX 650 Ti Boost is unquestionably the weaker card in our benchmarks, just not significantly so. So for it to be priced under the 7850 is the right move here.
In any case, as a 7850 competitor the GTX 650 Ti Boost is nothing amazing – its price and performance are close to the 7850, a card that has been sitting at its current price for months now – meaning it fills its intended role as a slightly cheaper, slightly slower 7850 competitor, but nothing more. If we had to pick between the two of them the 7850 does look a bit better due to its slightly higher performance and lower power consumption, but most buyers should be happy with either one. As we said in our introduction this is a case of balance being returned to the market – where there was once just the 7850 there is now a viable alternative from NVIDIA in the form of the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB.
Ultimately with a card at every $10 amidst a packed market there isn’t any kind of real sweet spot right now, so we don’t have any strong recommendations. For buyers on a fixed budget recent launches like the GTX 650 Ti Boost and 7790 introduce newer and better options at $169 and $149 respectively. Otherwise there’s a clear chain of progression right up to $200, and the best card is going to be the card you can afford.
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royalcrown - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
yeah, but the $$$ of a 660 is dropping every week, i just dont really see the point of the 650 ti when you have the 650 and 660 and they all have overclocked versions as well. a few places have the 2 gig 660 for $199.00royalcrown - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
well, if the new 650 is 149, then I guess that'd be a great price preformance vs the 660. I suppose it depends on what they cost in real life.SAAB_340 - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link
Is it just me thinking the 1GB model might be a bad idea given that these cards with the 192bit memory bus have asymetrical memory placement. The card only has 768MB of the memory at full bandwidth while the last 256MB will only give a 3rd of the bandwidth. (it's the same with the 2GB card but there 1.5GB has full bandwidth.) 768MB is not much with todays standards. Looking forward to the test showing how much that will impact on performance.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link
It's absurd, just like the AMD 1 GB card that was just announced. I've read that Skyrim with high resolution textures needs 2 GB at minimum and I doubt most people consider Skyrim a high-end game.Parhel - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link
The high resolution texture pack didn't really affect memory usage that much when I installed it. It was below 1GB both before and after. That's at 2560x1600, no AA. Maybe with mods it's a different story, but I think if you're trying to show where 1GB hits a wall, you'd be better off starting with a different game.mczak - Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - link
Personally I'd think it would make more sense to just have a 1.5GB card (at say right between the 149$ of the 1GB model and the 169$ of the 2GB model). All the same performance characteristics as the 2GB model (as you say the those asymmetric configurations are a little dubious or at least suspect anyway) while being cheaper. But marketing doesn't like 1.5GB cards (and as intended competitor of 7850 2GB of course "looks" much better).drew_afx - Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - link
How about Performance per dollar(retail) comparison for these very similarly spec'd cards?Make up some metric for 3d games(dx9/10/11), encoding/decoding, OpenCL, etc
Because a lot of games are CPU intensive, for potential buyers, FPS comparison on a specific benchmarking setup is not going to reflect equally in real life.
Also if a game can run 60+min. fps & maybe 75fps avg., then the card is as good as it can get for average people. This comparison proves X is better than Y when used with top of the line CPU Mobo RAM combo, but thats it. Many don't go for $2000+ gaming computer setup and put sub $170 GPU in it. What about overclocking potential? It's like comparing non-K cpu to unlocked one (just to put it in a perspective)
CiccioB - Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - link
Still, the game list is quite obsolete.It is not time to replace Crysis: warhead with Crysis3 and Dirt: Showdown with Dirt3?
And adding Skyrim? Last Tomb Raider?
Gamers would like to know how today games run on these cards, not only if one GPU is faster than another playing ancient games with obsolete engines.
This thing has already been pointed out during Titan's review. There someone suggested that games choice has been made to review games that are better on AMD rather than nvidia GPUs.
However, no answer was made, either to give reasons on why so many old obsolete games or whether the list was going to be changed/enlarged.
Still, new games are not considered for no apparent reason.
After having spent so many efforts in upgrading the site's appearance, which I like very much, it would be nice also to spend a bit of time to make a new game benchmark suite. It's 2013 and many games have been published after Crysis: warhead and Dirt: showdown.
Thanks in advance
Ryan Smith - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
We'll be adding two more games next month (or whenever I can find the time to validate them). Crysis: Warhead isn't going anywhere since it's our one legacy title for comparing DX10 cards to. And DiRT: Showdown is newer than DiRT 3, not older. It was Showdown that we replaced 3 with. Skyrim was also removed, since it's badly CPU limited on higher-end cards.medi01 - Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - link
Any reason 7850 and not 7790 (direct competitor) is marked black?