nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Pro Reviews

The AMD Radeon R7 260X isn’t faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB, but it wins in some areas and contains unproven features that could change things down the road.

The release of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 650 Ti graphics card is a not-so-veiled attempt at filling a part of the stack that it hasn't been fiercely competitive in since the GeForce GTX 460 768MB days. This new GeForce, based on a fundamentally cutdown version of the £170 GTX 660, now occupies the space between arch-rival AMD's Radeon HD 7770 and HD 7850 GPUs. Going by our benchmarks, performance, too, falls betwixt the Radeons', and it is sharp enough to enable most of the latest games to be played at high-quality settings at the desired full-HD, 1,920x1,080 resolution. Add to this the usual roster of GeForce GTX 600-series features - including multi-monitor support - and taking the low noise, power and temps into consideration, it's hard to argue against the GTX 650 Ti being a well-rounded card.

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti is an excellent card for the budget gamer. You might not be able to use high resolutions in certain games, and you might not be able to max out the graphics settings in all video games, but this card will get the job done nonetheless. While we know that the card is designed for gamers on a low budget, the card still lacks a few features that would have made this card stand out a bit more, including SLI, and GPU Boost.

Initially, I was disappointed that GeForce GTX 650 Ti lacked NVIDIA GPU Boost and SLI support. But then it occurred to me that overclocking would be as easy as it used to be, and most users aren't going to buy two of these cards for SLI in the first place with so many other choices available. For what it is, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti performs very well. Our benchmark tests confirmed that GTX 650 Ti can play games like BF3 at 1920x1080 with Ultra quality settings and still get good frame rates. For mainstream gamers who want to step up from aging hot-running graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is a value-packed option to consider.

When you get down to it the GTX 650 Ti is not going to break any FPS records for upper end performance. Testing at settings that will tax the card showed that it can for the most part deliver playable frame rates greater than 30FPS with the eye candy turned on in every game except Metro 2033. Even in this game turning the visual quality down a notch or two will bring the FPS back up and over 30FPS. This really is the case in every game tested. Designed to run DX11 games at medium to high global settings was the target and with the GTX 650 Ti the mark has been reached. Tweaking the settings downward a bit without compromising on resolution can deliver excellent gameplay all the way around. What it will do is allow the user looking for a GPU in the $150 range to enjoy the best of what the Kepler architecture can deliver. I ran some unofficial testing with Borderlands 2 using the highest possible settings in game, PhysX included, and the GTX 650 Ti delivered 32FPS at stock speeds and a nice 8FPS boost to 40FPS when overclocked. Not stellar but quite playable. With the GTX 650 Ti you get the vast majority of the NVIDIA ecosystem, from 3D Vision, to PhysX, TXAA, Adaptive Vsync, and support for up to four monitors. SLI is not supported at this price point as a more powerful single GPU would be the better option.

This is another tough one - these graphics card releases that are almost always easy to decipher and make recommendations around at the high end but become pretty cluttered in the sub-$200 markets as the crowds increase. The new GeForce GTX 650 Ti from NVIDIA struggles to find a comfortable place in our performance and pricing schemes at $149 between the HD 7770 and the HD 7850 1GB. Looking at only the cards themselves, the Radeon HD 7850 1GB at $179 makes a better a case for mainstream gaming selection than the GeForce GTX 650 Ti. Adding in the Assassins Creed 3 deal and you definitely perk up the appearance of the GTX 650 Ti without a doubt, but only if you find that title appealing.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti is powerful, small and budget friendly. Three words that usually don't go together when you are talking about desktop graphics cards!

With the GTX 650 Ti, NVIDIA had a real chance to move the sub-$199 market forward but that didn’t quite happen. Their newest card has been slotted between two solutions from AMD which have been on the market for ages and it doesn’t really compete against either one. With that being said, it is far from a disappointment. What we have here may be a safe play by NVIDIA but it performs well and still provides an excellent choice for anyone upgrading from a lower end GTX 500, 9000 or 8000-series part. And as EVGA’s SSC version demonstrated, board partners are fully capable of making the GTX 650 Ti a stand-out product on nearly every front.