MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5 BE Pro Reviews

The MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE can be found for $174.99 after a $10 MIR. This price is in-line with other NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST based video cards. That means that the MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE does not demand a price premium over other GTX 650 Ti BOOST based video cards. This is good news then, as the MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE is one of the fastest GTX 650 Ti BOOST based video card out-of-the-box, and achieved the highest overclock we've experienced yet. The AMD Radeon HD 7850 with 2GB of GDDR5 (with prices from $150 to the exact same price of the card evaluated today) has been falling in price over the past few months, bringing it to price parity with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST based video cards. Prior to those price changes, the AMD Radeon HD 7790 based video cards were the direct comparison cards based upon price, and were routinely frog stomped by its Kepler based opponent. Overall, Radeon HD 7850 is a much better competitor, performance wise, to the GeForce GTX 650 TI BOOST. It's a lot better than the Radeon HD 7790, which was just killed by the GTX 650 Ti BOOST. However, even though it is better competition, it still comes out under-performing the MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE. We experienced higher and better gameplay settings with the MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE that resulted in a better gameplay experience. At the end of the day, the MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC provides the highest factory overclock of any NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST card that we have strapped to our review bench thus far and is priced on par with stock clocked GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST video cards. That makes the MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE a fantastic value for your hard earned dollars. If you are trying to decide between the AMD Radeon HD 7850 or a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST based video card, we'd opt for the GTX 650 Ti BOOST. The MSI N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE would be a perfect selection for the best gameplay under $200.

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost adds a strong sub-$200 option to the company's lineup. Thanks to the added GPU Boost clock algorithm and a beefed up 192-bit memory interface, we see massive performance gains compared to the GTX 650 Ti without Boost. MSI's GTX 650 Ti Boost uses the company's famous TwinFrozr cooler and comes with a 50 MHz GPU overclock out of the box, which is about average when considering what's available on the market. Memory is unfortunately not overclocked, which would have been easy given how much headroom we saw in our manual testing. This overclock translates into just a 3% improvement in real-life performance, which is lower than what we've seen on other factory-overclocked cards. EVGA's card, for example, boosts up to 1250 MHz, while this card only goes up to 1175 MHz. MSI apparently used more conservative Boost settings in their BIOS. Compared to other cards, we found a large 28% improvement over the original GTX 650 Ti, which definitely makes the difference between "slow" and "very playable" at 1080p. Compared to AMD's lineup, we see performance that is 10% higher than the HD 7850 and 29% higher than the recently released HD 7790.

MSI’s Twin Frozr III may not stand out in any way, nor does it post chart-topping overclocking results but it came in with a strong overall performance. Once average Boost clocks were factored into the equation, this GTX 650 Ti’s framerates remained a hair behind EVGA’s Superclocked. This is likely due to MSI’s generous BIOS-specific power limit which allows their card some excess headroom as it strives to hit higher clock speeds. Like many other custom cards, MSI has added a custom heatsink to their newcomer, one which achieves low temperatures and extremely quiet acoustics even when overclocked. Every one of these factors combine to make the Twin Frozr III OC a great choice, provided the price is right.