GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review: Nvidia's Last Graphics Card For 2012

Features
By Don Woligroski, Igor Wallossek
published

Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 650 Ti is designed to fill the gap between its GeForce GTX 650 and 660. Is the GK106-based board fast enough to outmaneuver classics like the GeForce GTX 460 and Radeon HD 6850? Or, should you be looking to a 1 GB Radeon HD 7850?

OpenCL: Video Processing (Basemark CL)

Video Processing

Although the filters used in this suite are quite similar to those employed in the previous page's image processing tests, the outcome isn’t as consistent when it comes to video processing.

Overall, AMD's cards don't perform as well (with one exception) due to their weaker video hardware. We believe there is still some room for improvement on the driver side, since we see a portion of the Radeons' theoretical performance getting lost somewhere along the way.

Among the GeForce cards, we see the same outcome we saw on the previous page, with Kepler-based cards beating those with Fermi-derived GPUs and the new mainstream boards outpacing the previous high-end. Within the Kepler family, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti places exactly where we would have expected it, if not a little lower.

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti only gets passing grades when it comes to compute-intensive workloads. Although it manages a surprise win here and there, it is obvious that its main competition, AMD’s Radeon HD 7850 1 GB, remains comfortably out of reach overall. Ironically, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti may end up plugging the rather pronounced performance gap between the Radeon HD 7770 and the HD 7850.

Don Woligroski
150 Comments Comment from the forums
  • yialanliu
    Awesome, finally something that mainstream budget users can afford from Nvidia, been waiting for ages!
    Reply
  • jimbaladin
    40% slower than the 7850 while costing 10-20% less, and 10% faster than the 7770 while costing 25% more.

    That looks like a fail to me, and don't even get me started on how late this is.
    Reply
  • unionoob
    Would be awesome if you would include HD 5770 in benchmarks vs this one too, sure its old card but would love to see how powerfull is that one compered to this one.
    Reply
  • Mike-TH
    Why would you not include the GTX 660 Ti in the tests? After all, the 650 Ti and 660 Ti should be the options of the day for upgrades - why not compare them?
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    nVidia, you really need to stop gimping your bandwidth!
    Seriously, such a waste of silicon that could perform quite a bit better if you just gave it a little more breathing room....
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    I assume the place where it cripple the 650TI is the 16ROP as well as the 128bit bus. But the 16ROP is probably the biggest bottleneck of the card, this is the only place where u cant be fix by any OCing at all.

    With 128bit bus, they could have just leave the memory speed @ 6GHz. 5400 is pretty much ruin the thing.

    Edit: btw, this is probably one of the most useful review I see for a while. 6870/6850/560/460/7770 are all there, with benchmark of AA on and off. thumbs up for u author!
    Reply
  • Wisecracker
    jimbaladin40% slower than the 7850 while costing 10-20% less, and 10% faster than the 7770 while costing 25% more.That looks like a fail to me, and don't even get me started on how late this is.
    The HD7850 and GTX 650ti are essentially the same price on New Egg.





    Reply
  • proffet
    another PhysX card I suppose..
    slightly too weak for a dedicated in my book.
    I said my book as in my opinion.
    Reply
  • Iastfan112
    Mike-THWhy would you not include the GTX 660 Ti in the tests? After all, the 650 Ti and 660 Ti should be the options of the day for upgrades - why not compare them?
    Because comparing cards in the ~150 dollar range to a card thats +280 dollars is asinine?
    Reply
  • cknobman
    AnandTech has already released an article covering AMD officially dropping the price of the 1GB 7850 to $169 for the fall season
    This means we will easily see $150 or less after rebates and officially makes this Nvidia 650ti product a total fail. I see no reason to purchase this.
    Reply