GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Review: A Budget-Oriented GK106-Based Boss

By Don Woligroski
published

Test Setup And Benchmarks

According to Nvidia, its GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost is best-suited to native 1920x1080 displays, so that's where we'll test it. If you aspire to game across multiple monitors, we recommend saving up for a higher-end graphics card with a more potent GPU and wider memory bus.

AMD's Radeon HD 7850 is this card's primary competition. Its results will be the ones we reference most often. We're also testing the GeForce GTX 650 Ti and GeForce GTX 660 to see how the 650 Ti Boost compares to the rest of Nvidia's GK106-based boards. Finally, the older Radeon HD 6870 and GeForce GTX 560 show us how Nvidia's latest effort stands up to previous-generation sub-$200 graphics cards.

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Test System
CPUIntel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E), 3.3 GHz/3.9 GHz Max Turbo, Six Cores, LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3 Cache, Hyper-Threading enabled.
MotherboardASRock X79 Extreme9 (LGA 2011) Chipset: Intel X79 Express
NetworkingOn-Board Gigabit LAN controller
MemoryCorsair Vengeance LP PC3-16000, 4 x 4 GB, 1600 MT/s, CL 8-8-8-24-2T
GraphicsGeForce GTX 650 Ti 1 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 560 1 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 660 2 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7850 1 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 6870 1 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7790 1 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5
Hard DriveSamsung 470-series 256 GB (SSD)
PowerePower EP-1200E10-T2 1,200 W ATX12V, EPS12V
Software and Drivers
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows 8
DirectXDirectX 11.1
Graphics DriversAMD Catalyst 13.3 Beta 2Nvidia GeForce 314.21 BetaRadeon HD 7790 Catalyst Beta Driver
Benchmarks
Borderlands 2v.1.0.28.697606, Custom Benchmark, 60-second Fraps run
Crysis 3v.1.0.0.1, Custom Benchmark, 60-second Fraps run
F1 2012v.1.3.3.0, Included Benchmark, 60-second Fraps run
Far Cry 3v.1.0.0.1, Custom Benchmark, 50-second Fraps run
Tomb Raiderv.1.0.722.3, Custom Benchmark, 45-second Fraps run
Don Woligroski
144 Comments Comment from the forums
  • barto
    Let the battle begin!
    Reply
  • Souv_90
    anandtech review is out for 650 ti boost...just faster than 7790 and slower than 7850 in every games tested only except bf3 and Shogun

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/6838/nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-boost-review-

    (wonder why tom's review is swaying more in favour of kepler everytime I see)
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    This card pricing seems a little too good that it kinda makes me regret getting the GTX660 just a while ago. Damn it, I hate the Kepler series and their pricing :/

    Although I can't say the same about the power consumption and some part in me actually hoped and expected the card would come with a game bundle.
    Reply
  • Memnarchon
    Souv_90anandtech review is out for 650 ti boost...just faster than 7790 and slower than 7850 in every games tested only except bf3 and Shogunhttp://www.anandtech.com/show/6838 st-review-(wonder why tom's review is swaying more in favour of kepler everytime I see)Techpowerup said also that 650ti boost is faster than 7850.
    edit: hardwarecanucks / PCPerspective. A lot of sites agree with Tom's, 7850 and 650ti boost are about the same in performance.

    But the point is that is similar to 7850 while its cheaper. Now that's what I wanted to see when I was saying we need better performance for $$$. Now lets see AMD dropping its prices too so we can have a sweat war between them that profits our wallet :D.
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    It looks to me form the chart except the 7900. AMD GCN is are actually far more efficient here. Better compute + better performance/watt. So Nvidia taunting about their 'most efficient GPU' seems got defeated again. I wonder what if AMD make 7900 a 1.5x of 7800.

    I still do not like the idea of Odd memory configuration. 1GB/2GB @ 192bit. The last 512MB from 2GB model is only getting 64bit memory bandwidth. Why cant they offer a a proper 1.5GB version @ middle price $159?

    Tomshardware fail to bench 2GB 7850. I like to see that vs 2GB 650Ti Boost.
    Reply
  • AMDRadeonHD
    it beats the 7790, 192 bit+2gb, so awesome...
    Reply
  • pcperson7
    Watch out gtx 660!
    Reply
  • Henrik Olsson
    from reviews around the web the GTX 650 ti boost is trading blows with the 7850 very well. i just gotta say it took nvidia awhile to get back into the game after AMD lowerd the pricing of there cards. good to see some competion again insted of just going "get the AMD card they are cheaper"
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    darn it. i was enjoying reading the review considering i've been waiting to se how this card performs ever since i heard of it. 192bit interface with a cut-down gk106 under $170 and sli - makes gtx 650ti irrelevant and puts a good deal of hurt on the 128bit 7790 in terms of config. i doubt gtx650tiboost can outperform a 7790 in compute tasks but this is a gaming gfx card above all. this seems like a good proposition for budget 1080p gaming, so far.

    now, if amd brings back 7850 1gb, it'd be awesome (i don't buy the 'lack of gddr5 chips' excuse for a second).

    will there be gtx650tiboost sli performance analysis vs 7790 cfx and 7850 1gb cfx? hopefully nvidia has good drivers available because the sub $200 gfx card price war just got heated up.

    edit: imho nvidia is late to the sub $200 gfx card price war. this card shoulda come out instead of gtx 650ti (128bit). amd should be updating with new gcn cards soon while kepler 2.0 seems nowhere in sight. better late(!) than never, i guess..
    Reply
  • CrisisCauser
    The 7850 has a 256-bit bus, not 128-bit. Please fix your chart on page 1.
    Reply