You know the graphics card market is in a bad place when vendors resort to rereleasing five-year old graphics cards. Kuroutoshikou, a Japanese vendor, has announced that its GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (GF-GTX1050Ti-E4GB/SF/P2) will hit the domestic market in mid-March.
In reality, the GF-GTX1050Ti-E4GB/SF/P2 is a rebranded version of Palit's GeForce GTX 1050 Ti StormX. Based on the GP107 (Pascal) silicon, the graphics card is equipped with 768 CUDA cores with a 1,392 MHz boost clock and 4GB of 7 Gbps GDDR5 memory. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is rated for 75W so it doesn't require any external PCIe power connectors, making it a good plug-n-play option for entry-level gamers, even though it is no longer among the best graphics cards.
The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti's revival isn't a coincidence though. It was Nvidia itself who decided to replenish its partners with Pascal GPUs in the middle of the ongoing graphics card crysis. Nvidia's actions also paved the way for other vendors to get rid of their old Pascal stock, including Palit who might launch new specialized GeForce GTX 1060 models for cryptocurrency mining.
We've already started seeing more GeForce GTX 1050 Ti availability here in the U.S. Sadly, the pricing leaves much to be desired. While Kuroutoshikou's GeForce GTX 1050 Ti will arrive in Japan with a price tag of ¥20,727 (~$190.97), custom models in the U.S. market currently retail between $330 and $600. That's pretty insane since the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti has five years under its belt now and had launched for $139.
With how ridiculous pricing is right now and the graphics card shortage, picking up a pre-built PC, especially one of the best gaming PCs, suddenly doesn't sound like a bad idea anymore.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
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blacknemesist Actually a decent move, the last thing I want is my current GPU to die on me and have to either not game at all for months on end, maybe until the 4xxx gen comes out, or buy overpriced GPUs from up to 3 gens back depending on how costly GPUs are on my local stores.Reply
Buying a cheap replacement for light gaming that I can then use for a mini itx system or something is good news. -
Giroro Good, I'm all about this.Reply
Hopefully Nvidia is working on something newer to replace the GTX 1050 Ti, but it is definitely a step in the right direction to make something available on the low end. -
LolaGT Getting used to and accepting being a sucker is never a good idea.Reply
With how ridiculous pricing is right now and the graphics card shortage, picking up a pre-built PC, especially one of the best gaming PCs, suddenly doesn't sound like a bad idea anymore. -
CB94 Has anyone else just given up and decided to wait a year till this crap is over with ? I was hopeful about building a new pc soon but after this mess I think I'll just wait for zen 4 and RTX 4--- series at this point. There isn't a ton of new games out that take advantage of all this new hardware and I was able to get a Series X.Reply -
itzmec
Yes, I did. I am instead going to gut and rehab my kitchen.CB94 said:Has anyone else just given up and decided to wait a year till this crap is over with ? I was hopeful about building a new pc soon but after this mess I think I'll just wait for zen 4 and RTX 4--- series at this point. There isn't a ton of new games out that take advantage of all this new hardware and I was able to get a Series X. -
Giroro CB94 said:Has anyone else just given up and decided to wait a year till this crap is over with ? I was hopeful about building a new pc soon but after this mess I think I'll just wait for zen 4 and RTX 4--- series at this point. There isn't a ton of new games out that take advantage of all this new hardware and I was able to get a Series X.
I listed my GTX 1080 on ebay, I'm hoping prices will come down enough in a month or two that I can get an RTX 3060 (or better) at its sale price, when things hopefully calm down a bit.
If not, meh, the RTX 2060MQ in my laptop isn't the worst thing out there. That laptop has some weird power throttling behavior though. -
CB94 Giroro said:I listed my GTX 1080 on ebay, I'm hoping prices will come down enough in a month or two that I can get an RTX 3060 (or better) at its sale price, when things hopefully calm down a bit.
If not, meh, the RTX 2060MQ in my laptop isn't the worst thing out there. That laptop has some weird power throttling behavior though.
I'm still holding onto my GTX 980. I should be able to make it another year till I get a new build. -
mitch074 I hope my RX480 doesn't die on me - poor thing is still chugging along, but 5 years is pushing it for a GPU - even for me.Reply -
Sleepy_Hollowed CB94 said:Has anyone else just given up and decided to wait a year till this crap is over with ? I was hopeful about building a new pc soon but after this mess I think I'll just wait for zen 4 and RTX 4--- series at this point. There isn't a ton of new games out that take advantage of all this new hardware and I was able to get a Series X.
Due to Covid and crypto mining, expect to only find 2-3 generations behind of GPUs unless crypto prices tank entirely for a while.
If anyone is looking to replace the entire PC though, a prebuilt system with a new card is an option but know it will be your card long term.