NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti review: A Pascal card for everyone

Note: This article was first published on October 25, 2016.

Taking on AMD in its comfort zone

There is finally a Pascal card for everyone. While NVIDIA completed the core of its excellent 16nm FinFET line-up with the GeForce GTX 1060, it still didn’t have a card to compete with the AMD Radeon RX 400 series cards in the sub-US$200 market. After all, the GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition did have a starting price of US$299, just out of reach of gamers on the most razor-thin of budgets.

Well, NVIDIA has finally addressed the gap. Last Tuesday, it announced two new cards targeted specifically at the most price conscious of gamers – the GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti. With starting prices of US$109 and US$139 respectively, NVIDIA’s new cards are arguably priced more attractively than the Radeon RX 460 and 470 (US$100 and US$160 after the recent price drop).

Sure, the Radeon RX 460 is slightly cheaper than the GeForce GTX 1050, but if NVIDIA’s card turns out to be that much faster, the small price premium could be well worth it.

With its latest GeForce cards, NVIDIA now has a card to compete in every market segment. Enthusiasts will find themselves well satisfied with the pricey GeForce GTX 1080, while more casual users looking simply for a functional mini-ITX system can make a beeline for the new GeForce GTX 1050.

Raising the bar on the minimum

But despite the rock bottom pricing, NVIDIA is still making some fairly ambitious performance claims about the new cards. It goes without saying that you’ll be able to run popular MOBA titles like Dota 2 at over 60fps at 1080p, but the cards reportedly have enough heft to run new titles like Grand Theft Auto V and Gears of War 4 on Medium settings.

The latter is what differentiates the new Pascal cards from previous generation cards in a similar price bracket. NVIDIA says that this performance upgrade was motivated primarily by an upward trend in the minimum GPU performance requirement. According to the company, the minimum requirement to run the newest release in franchises like Tomb Raider, GTA, and Witcher has tripled over the past three years, making them even more inaccessible to a considerable chunk of consumers.

But with the release of the GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti, NVIDIA hopes to make the latest triple AAA titles playable for just about anyone, provided they stick to Medium settings and a 1080p resolution. Ultimately, the recurring refrain is one of accessibility, which also echoes what AMD is doing with its Radeon RX 400 series of cards.

The chip powering the cards is a new GP107 GPU, comprising two Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs) for a total of six Pascal Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs). The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti utilizes a fully enabled GP107 GPU, giving it a total of 768 CUDA cores and 48 texture units. However, the GeForce GTX 1050 comes with certain functional units disabled. For one, it only has five SMs, which is why it has just 640 CUDA cores (there are 128 cores in each SM) and 40 texture units.

That said, both cards feature four 32-bit memory controllers for a 128-bit memory bus width. Eight Render Output Units (ROPs) are tied to each 32-bit memory controller, giving both cards a total of 32 ROPs. 

And because these are still Pascal chips at heart, they support all the new features that debuted on the earlier GP104 GPU. This includes things like improved power efficiency, enhanced memory compression techniques to free up memory bandwidth, and of course, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) technology for better compatibility with multi-display setups. Still, the latter feature appears more as an arbitrary inclusion than anything else – with just 4GB of GDDR5 memory on the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and 2GB on the GeForce GTX 1050, we think it unlikely that you’re going to want to run anything as extravagant as a triple-display configuration.

A closer look at the card

To evaluate the new NVIDIA GPU, we've been provided with an ASUS Expedition GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, a member of a brand new series of cards from ASUS. There are no Founders Edition models for the GP107 cards, so we’ll be skipping straight to reviewing a custom card for our performance review and evaluating the custom edition card directly.

ASUS has stuck to the reference specifications for the Expedition card, and it features a 1,290MHz base clock and a 7,008MHz effective memory clock.

While the Strix cards ship with premium features like Aura RGB lighting and FanConnect headers, the Expedition cards have another purpose in mind. As the name suggests, these cards are built with long-term durability and reliability in mind. It looks like ASUS thinks that there might be a market for users who want to build a compact, functional PC that lasts, and they’re probably right.

To this end, the Expedition GeForce GTX 1050 Ti features a carefully curated set of features like dual double ball bearing fans for increased longevity. While regular sleeve bearing fans are susceptible to having their lubricating oil dry out, ball bearing fans use thicker lubricants that don’t evaporate as easily, which allows them to work smoothly for far longer.

These are also semi-passive fans that will stop spinning when the GPU temperature falls below 55 degrees Celsius, so you’ll get the necessary peace and quiet when you aren’t gaming.

The cards have even undergone a series of endurance tests to ensure that it can stand up to its claims. According to ASUS, this means an unwieldy-sounding 144 hours of tests, including things like two-hour reboot tests, 15 hours of 3DMark looping, and stability tests with the latest games. The point was to subject the cards to tests mimicking the demanding environment of a LAN shop, where systems are pretty much expected to run flawlessly round the clock.

Having said that, the Expedition is quite a compact card as well. At 212mm long, it will fit into the majority of systems, which means it’s shaping up to be quite an appealing choice for system builders looking to put together a reliable, mini-ITX machine for the living room.

It hews to NVIDIA’s power requirements as well. This is a 75-watt TDP card, so it can be powered entirely by the PCIe slot on the motherboard. ASUS has opted not to include any additional power connectors, making the installation process even neater and minimizing cable clutter.

Round the back, you get a DVI-D port, one HDMI 2.0 connector, and a single DisplayPort 1.4 output.

Test Setup

The detailed specifications of our current graphics card testbed system are as follow:-

• Intel Core i7-6950X
• ASUS ROG Strix X99 Gaming motherboard
• 2 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2133 (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-36)
• Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB SATA 6Gbps solid state drive (OS + benchmark + games)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gbps hard drive (general storage)
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• Intel INF 10.1.1.14

The price of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti sets it up for direct competition against the Radeon RX 460 and 470 from AMD. It slots in neatly between the two cards, which is why we’ve included them here for comparison purposes. In addition, we threw in the GeForce GTX 960 to give you an idea of how the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti stacks up against another value-oriented card from the previous generation. Finally, we tested the GeForce GTX 1060 as well to get an idea of the performance differential between two adjacent cards in NVIDIA’s Pascal product stack.

Here’s a list of all the compared cards and their driver versions:

• ASUS Expedition GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (ForceWare 375.57)
• Gigabyte Radeon RX 470 G1 Gaming 4G (Crimson Edition 16.10.2)
• XFX Radeon RX 460 2G Double Dissipation (Crimson Edition 16.10.2)
• ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 960 2GB (ForceWare 375.63)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (ForceWare 375.63)

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Benchmarks

Our performance benchmarks now include a handful of the latest titles, including games that utilize DirectX 12. We’ve also included the new 3DMark DirectX 12 benchmark, Time Spy, to provide more insight into the card’s ability to take advantage of DirectX 12 features.

Here’s the list of the benchmarks we used:

• Futuremark 3DMark (2013) with Time Spy
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Crysis 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division
• Ashes of the Singularity
• Hitman

We used the Fire Strike Extreme test in 3DMark (2013) for our power and temperature tests.

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

As expected, the US$139 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti fitted right into the gap between the AMD Radeon RX 460 and 470. The more expensive Radeon RX 470 takes quite a commanding lead, coming in between 44 and 50 per cent faster than the new NVIDIA card.

That said, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti was also vastly slower than the GeForce GTX 1060 – the latter was up to a good 70 per cent faster.

Still, the card managed a decent showing against the US$100 Radeon RX 460, AMD’s cheapest Polaris graphics card. In the 1080p 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark, it was 28 per cent quicker. Of course, the more appropriate contender would have been a GTX 1050 and not a GTX 1050 Ti card to bench against the Radeon RX 460, but we'll have to wait for another day to test it out.

These performance differentials were mirrored in the DirectX 12 Time Spy benchmark as well, where the new GP107-based card lagged behind both the Radeon RX 470 and GeForce GTX 1060 but trumped the Radeon RX 460.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Because of the demanding resolutions that we run Shadow of Mordor at, this is a benchmark that is very much dependent on the memory bandwidth available. As a result, our 2GB version of the GeForce GTX 960 didn’t fare as well against the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, where it ended up trailing by up to 13 per cent.

The card was also a good 50 per cent faster than the Radeon RX 460, but the latter is also memory starved like the GeForce GTX 960.  Even so, it's clear that NVIDIA is staking out the middle ground between the Radeon RX 460 and 470 (considering the default frame buffer size that's pegged with their GPU SKUs).

Unsurprisingly, none of these cards fare very well once you go beyond a 2,560 x 1,600-pixel resolution, but it’s worth noting that the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti turned out rather playable frame rates at the 1600p resolution. NVIDIA doesn’t intend for you to push beyond 1080p with this card, but it looks like there is still some breathing room to play with (assuming you’re willing to settle for less than 60fps of course).

Crysis 3

Crysis 3 proved quite trying for the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti as well, although we have to point out that we’re running our benchmarks with the settings maxed out, which isn’t quite how NVIDIA intended for the card to be used.

As we cranked the resolution and anti-aliasing settings up, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti once again overtook the GeForce GTX 960 2GB, no doubt due to the advantage it had over it in terms of available memory. It also handily beat out the Radeon RX 460 by around 31 per cent, a decent amount considering that it is only about US$40 more expensive.

However, it was once again nowhere close to the Radeon RX 470 or GeForce GTX 1060.

Tom Clancy’s The Division

The Division turned up few surprises, with the results closely mirroring what we observed in the previous few benchmarks. The Radeon RX 470 was a whopping 60 per cent faster, clearly showing that you’re going to net quite a big performance boost if you decide to pony up some extra cash.

All the results do is reiterate the limitations, and also the strengths, of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. At US$139, you shouldn’t be expecting miracles from the card even it is based on NVIDIA’s excellent Pascal architecture. This means no cranking up the settings or venturing beyond 1080p, but what you’ll also get is pretty decent performance if you don’t try to be too adventurous.

Ashes of the Singularity

Note: We weren’t able to get the game to run in DirectX 12 mode at Crazy settings, which is why those fields have been left blank.

While AMD cards have traditionally excelled in Ashes of the Singularity (AotS) – indeed, the Radeon RX 470 posted as much as a 40 per cent improvement when moving to DirectX 12 – the Radeon RX 460 didn’t seem to be able to capitalize on any of that. Similarly, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti exhibited similar performance numbers when moving over to DirectX 12. In fact, there was even a slight performance drop, which is disappointing but not unlike what we observed with the GeForce GTX 1060.

Interestingly enough, this was also the game where the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti managed to narrow the gap with the Radeon RX 470 to just a few frames (in DirectX 11 mode).

Hitman

The performance gap between the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and the Radeon RX 470 widened once again in Hitman. This time, the former card did not manage to reap as huge a benefit in DirectX 12, while the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti continued to exhibit minute performance drops with Microsoft’s latest API.

But looking at the raw numbers alone, things are actually looking up for NVIDIA’s newest card. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti managed to push close to 60fps at 1080p and High settings, which bodes well for NVIDIA’s claims that you’ll be able to run most titles at 60fps at Medium settings.

Temperature and Power Consumption

There’s nothing much to remark on when it comes to temperature. While we were surprised to see the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti run hotter than the GeForce GTX 960 and 1060, that cannot be attributed solely to the GPU because of the different coolers in play here.

The card’s power consumption figures were impressive however. Its total system power consumption was just 134 watts, lower than the Radeon RX 460, a card which is also a fair bit slower. That said, we should point out that the Radeon RX 460 we tested is an XFX model with an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector, so that could be a contributing factor to the higher power consumption as well (the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti we reviewed has no auxiliary connectors).

Overclocking

We were actually quite pleased with the card’s overclocking performance. Even though it sits at the bottom of NVIDIA’s Pascal line-up, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti turned out to be quite a decent overclocker. NVIDIA told us that it managed to hit over 1,900MHz on the card during its own internal testing, and we did manage to come close to that figure.

After boosting the base clock to 1,540MHz, the card was able to hit a top speed of 1,848MHz while under load. This translated into a 7 per cent improvement in performance in 3DMark Fire Strike, a decent jump by most standards.

In comparison, the Radeon RX 460 posted just a minuscule 1.5 per cent increase, after we boosted the base clock to 1,282MHz, up from 1,220MHz. That said, the Radeon RX 470 did more respectably. We were able to increase the clock speeds by over 100MHz to 1,339MHz, resulting in approximately a 6 per cent improvement.

Delivering on the bare essentials

When all is said and done, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti isn’t some wondrous card that will deliver great performance at a rock bottom price. It’s important to temper your expectations going forward, especially seeing as how the rest of the 10-series cards have redefined their respective price brackets so successfully.

That’s not to say that the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti falls short of the rest of the Pascal series. It’s a very good card for the price, and quite smartly slots into the fairly large gap between the Radeon RX 460 and RX 470. If you thought the US$169 (in the ballpark of S$349 locally) Radeon RX 470 was too pricey, and the Radeon RX 460 was too weak, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is shaping up to be a great middle-of-the-road option.

The ASUS Expedition GeForce GTX 1050 Ti we reviewed here costs S$289, while prices for other models are so far hovering between S$249 and S$289, which is quite a bit cheaper than what you’d have to pay for a Radeon RX 470 4GB locally.

NVIDIA has always done well in the high-end, but when it targets the budget market, it always does so in a very focused manner. You don’t get a generic marketing pitch touting “essential” performance or anything like that. Instead, you get a laser sharp focus on a specific audience or usage scenario. With the GeForce GTX 950, it was MOBA games. This time, it’s casting the net a little wider, encompassing both eSports titles and even the latest AAA games. There’s just one very important caveat – you’ll get 60fps, but only if you play at 1080p and Medium settings.

Suffice to say, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti will appeal to gamers on really tight budgets. If you can afford it, we’d encourage you to pony up for a Radeon RX 470, or even a GeForce GTX 1060. But if not, you really can’t go wrong with NVIDIA’s latest card if you set your expectations right.

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