Manufacturer: Gainward Price: $ 170/$ 200 US Author: Steve Date: 04/16/2013

[ Introduction ]

Today we are checking out the new Golden Sample Dual Fan graphics cards from Gainward which are based on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti and GTX 660 GPUs. The GTX 650 Ti is the newer of the two so we are interested to see how it compares to the competition as we test it in over half a dozen of the very latest video games... Back on September 13th 2012 the first GeForce GTX 650 series graphics card was announced and it was known simply as the GTX 650. With an MSRP of just $110 it wasn’t exactly the most powerful gaming graphics card money could buy, with a memory bandwidth of just 80GB/s which is less than that of the 3 year old GTX 460. The following month saw the release of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti which cost slightly more with an MSRP of $150, but offered better performance thanks to its use of the GK106 architecture. This meant that the larger die allowed for a much more aggressive core configuration, improving texture fill rates by 75%. This made the GTX 650 Ti our favourite $100 - $150 graphics card last year as it thrashed the Radeon HD 7770 in our opinion. That said, AMD came away with the $150 - $200 price range thanks to the Radeon HD 7850, and with the 7790 coming in at $150 last month this has helped AMD lock down this price range. Therefore on March 26th 2013 Nvidia released the poorly named GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, now the third graphics card to carry the GTX 650 name. With an MSRP of $170 the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost sits between the Radeon HD 7790 and the 7850. In terms of performance we actually expect the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost to be quite a lot faster than the standard GeForce GTX 650 Ti despite the fact that it is based on the same GK106 architecture. Although the core configuration has remained very much the same, with only a slight increase in ROPs both the core and memory clock speeds have been increased. Additionally Nvidia has also added a boost clock feature which can automatically overclock the GTX 650 Ti Boost when temperatures allow. However more importantly than all of that, the memory bus width has been increased from the very limited 128-bit of the GTX 650 Ti to a 192-bit which has effectively improved the memory bandwidth by 67% and this is what we expect will deliver most of the additional performance. As a Nvidia board partner Gainward has been quick to jump aboard the GTX 650 Ti Boost train and they have done so with a special Golden Sample version. Whereas their standard GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics card features a single fan design, the GS version comes with an upgraded cooler boasting a pair of fans, while the card itself is available in 1GB or 2GB flavors...

Table of Contents >>> Introduction <<< GTX 650 Ti Boost GS Dual in Detail Test System Specs Benchmarks: Battlefield 3, Bioshock Benchmarks: Crysis 3, DiRT 3 Benchmarks: Far Cry 3, Max Payne 3 Benchmarks: Sleeping Dogs, Medal of Honor Benchmarks: Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider Power Consumption & Temperatures Conclusion Next Page ->

tttights

Posted on: 04/19/2013 11:53 PM AMD and Nvidia’s naming schemes never seize to amaze me. Still for a “boost” version the performance gain is pretty bloody good.