ASUS GTX650TI-DC2O-1GD5 Pro Reviews

HEXUS remains of the opinion that the recently-introduced GeForce GTX 650 Ti is a good video card. Priced at not much more than £100 for reference-like models and providing solid gaming performance at a full-HD resolution, NVIDIA's add-in card partners still need to think carefully about how to present retail offerings. GTX 650 Ti clearly works best when playing to its strengths. The reference card's tiny form factor makes it particularly suitable for small-form-factor PCs, while low noise and enviable power-draw qualities help its case as a natural fit for mainstream PCs. ASUS, meanwhile, has a completely different take on what makes a good GTX 650 Ti card. The Direct CU II TOP model, reviewed here, is all about projecting appeal by dint of sheer size. Notwithstanding the excellent thermal and noise properties of the card, obviously helped by housing the GPU under a massive heatsink, we believe this is the wrong tack to take with this class of GPU.

The 650 Ti DirectCU II TOP edition comes with a nice overclock and some very good headroom for more. It offers playable framerates in most games at higher settings for a nice price.

The ASUS GTX 650 Ti performed spectacularly in its range, offering top of the line temperatures and power consumption. The SAP components did not emit any buzzing, which can be heard on many reference cards with cheap components. Fan noise blended in with the case unless forced to run faster than automated control, even then they weren't that loud. Overclocking results were impressive as well: 1255MHz core and 1463MHz memory from 1033MHz and 1350MHz respectively! The two diagnostic LEDs near the 6-pin PCIe power connection should help users and technical support in trouble shooting any issues relating to power. The ASUS GPU Tweak software seems really useful and worked well at overclocking and monitoring the graphics card. With the four outputs available almost everyone should be able to plug the card in and run it. Only three outputs can be used for NVIDIA Surround Technology though. The attentions to detail make this a high quality product that worked perfectly throughout testing!

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 650 Ti offers much better performance than the normal GTX 650. The GTX 650 uses GK107 silicon, whereas the GTX 650 Ti uses GK106 silicon, which is also used on the GTX 660. This change makes the card 30% faster than GTX 650, which is still much slower than the GTX 660. Overall, we see decent performance for 1680x1050 gaming; full HD 1080p gaming is asking a bit too much from the card, even though it should handle HD 1080p gaming at lower details settings. Compared to AMD's offerings, the card sits right between the HD 7770 and HD 7850. MSI has overclocked their card out of the box, which gives it a 4% performance boost - not as much as I had hoped for. It would have helped performance if NVIDIA had included their GPU Boost technology, or ASUS had overclocked the memory. Compared to MSI's GTX 650 Ti Power Edition, the ASUS card is clocked a bit higher, which translates into a 1% performance difference - nothing to write home about.

Hard core gamers of the FPS style game will surely not find satisfaction with this card and AMD at this level is still very competitive making this a hard category to dominate in for the folks at NVIDIA. The point of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti I believe though is to just have a presence in this level and in that they have succeeded. You also get no chance of scaling with the GeForce GTX 650Ti as it has no SLI finger and with 2 cards installed no SLI option was apparent in the NVIDIA control panel. Its hard to get really excited about the GTX 650 Ti, but for NVIDIA fans wanting an entry level card that supports DX11 and PhysX this is the best bang for your buck solution you will get under the $200.00 price point. ASUS like always can take any card and maximize its potential and the same has been done with the DirectCU Top GeForce GTX 650 Ti as seen by the cards cooling and its looks that obviously sets it apart from the rest of the pack, at the end of the day this card wins the Top Value Award as at this price point it has enough bling to make it worthy.