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

By Igor Wallossek, Don Woligroski
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?

Benchmark Results: Max Payne 3

Max Payne 3 is fairly demanding at its highest detail settings. So, we're starting with the Normal quality preset and no MSAA (though FXAA is turned on).

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti gives us good performance levels, which are high enough to beat AMD's Radeon HD 6850. Nvidia's new card does lag behind the GeForce GTX 560 and Radeon HD 6870 a bit.

In order to get playable performance with 4x MSAA enabled, we had to drop from DirectX 11 to DirectX 10.1, turn off FXAA, and drop anisotropic filtering to 8x. Even in light of our adjustments, we experienced notable dips below 30 FPS on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti. So, we'd recommend keeping MSAA turned off in this title unless you have a more powerful graphics card.

Igor Wallossek
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