nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST Pro Reviews

If we haven't made it clear yet, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost is a good upgrade if you are on an aging Radeon HD 7770, or GeForce GTX 650. The GTX 650 Ti Boost will get you a substantial performance improvement. If your choice is between the Radeon HD 7790 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, the new GTX 650 Ti Boost is the better option for a better gameplay experience. If you are trying to decide between a Radeon HD 7850 and a GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, we'd have to go with the GTX 650 Ti Boost. It offered slightly better performance; just make sure you get the 2GB model. And it is less expensive. We had to double check the price of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti with NVIDIA after experiencing the performance delivered. It seemed like the performance delivered for the price was too good to be true. NVIDIA confirmed that the 1GB GTX 650 Ti will be $149, and the 2GB model will be $169. The GeForce GTX 650 Ti delivers the best performance we've ever seen at the $150-160 price segment. It truly is phenomenal, and we are impressed at what has been delivered to gamers. We aren't just buttering you up, when we talk about value and getting the best bang for the buck; the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is the definition of that. NVIDIA could have easily sold the GTX 650 Ti for the higher price point of $170-$180 and it would still be a good deal. The fact that it will be $150-$160 is just incredible. Those gamers on a budget don't have to settle for a poor gaming experience. The GeForce GTX 650 Ti will allow budget gamers to play today's latest games at high settings at 1080p for $150-$160. We are very excited to get in some retail custom built GTX 650 Ti Boost cards so we can see what extreme overclocking can bring performance up to. The GeForce GTX 650 Ti easily earns our HardOCP Editor’s Choice Gold award.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics processor is a long-overdue introduction into the crucial sub-£150 market. This new GPU bears striking similarity to the pricier GeForce GTX 660 - it is the same, save for a loss of one of five SMX units - thus rendering its retail name a misnomer. Marketing decisions aside, a proven GK106 architecture leads to full-HD gaming performance that is more than satisfactory when running medium/high-quality settings in many of today's latest games, and its 25 per cent-plus improvement over a GTX 650 Ti is genuinely telling as it marks the difference between playable and what we consider smooth frame-rates.

Bringing this review to a close, given the back-to-back launches of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost and the Radeon HD 7790, our first instinct is to frame the GTX 650 Ti Boost in reference to the 7790. Indeed the GTX 650 Ti Boost will be NVIDIA’s 7790 competitor, but what we’re reviewed – a 2GB GTX 650 Ti Boost – is not the same as the 1GB card that will occupy that $149 price point. So we want to hold off on that comparison for a bit. We need to see a 1GB GTX 650 Ti Boost to properly make that evaluation. When we opened this article we mentioned how there’s practically a card at every $10 between $100 and $200. For consumers on a fixed budget this is great since it means there’s a video card at every price, but without distinct islands it makes it harder for us as reviewers to make a recommendation. But as always we’ll take a stab at it.

Powerful and efficient: hands down the best mainstream card on the market

Looking at their performance versus the Radeon HD 7790, snagging a GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST for a couple of extra bucks makes a lot of sense. For gamers with 1080p monitors (or lower resolutions), the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST is an affordable graphics solution with minimal compromise. At higher resolutions or for multi-monitor surround gaming you'll want to spring for something with a little more oomph, but at its price point, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST is tough to beat.

On the whole, SLI and CrossFire drivers work very well, much better than a few years ago. Driver profiles for new games are being constantly updated, so you shouldn’t have any issues with upcoming titles. In other words, consumers should not avoid SLI or CrossFire. They are no longer reserved for ultra high end gaming rigs and with practically no driver issues they are a perfectly sound choice for the average gamer.

NVIDIA’s $170 GTX 650 Ti Boost is a stellar graphics card which couldn’t have been introduced at a better time. It competes perfectly against higher priced AMD cards which, for the most part, still have recently received some steep rebates. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the $170 HD 7790 2GB remains largely missing in action, weeks after launch. With such a competitive solution in their stables, it’s obvious that NVIDIA’s board partners have put a ton of effort into creating the best possible GTX 650 Ti Boost cards without associated price premiums. Indeed, as we saw in this roundup, the amount of value being packed into these custom designs is nothing short of astounding. In our opinion, every one of these cards would make a great match for a budget-conscious gamer but there are several points of differentiation between them.

After running the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI through our test suite, I have to admit that I'm impressed. The duo delivered performance easily matching and often exceeding much more expensive single-card options such as the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, and they don't cost as much. SLI multi-GPU scaling works well with all of our titles except for F1 2012. Scaling by going from one to two GTX 650 Ti Boost cards is around 70%, even with F1 2012 taken into account. Unlike AMD, NVIDIA does a good job of maintaining its SLI profiles, so you should be able to play new games without a long wait for multi-GPU support. However, the risk that a game will not be supported still exists, and you might, at worst, end up with single-card performance. This is in my opinion, given the massive performance-per-dollar advantage, an acceptable tradeoff. I would definitely recommend a GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI setup to a friend looking to spend as little money as possible on a high-end gaming rig.

Nvidia needed something to bridge the gap and the GTX 650 ti card already was in existence. Add on some features from the higher end models and you have a formula for a card that can easily bridge the space left open between the card models. The addition of GPU boost allows for the higher boost clocks which means even better gaming performance for users depending upon loading conditions. Also the ability to add a second card in SLI means you can easily scale this cards performance up to a much higher level without breaking the bank and giving yourself a very good performance gaming system at a price point still far below the cost of a single high end model card. The overclockability for a reference model is quite good and speaks well for the capability of the chipset and memory,l I can only imagine what the capabilities will be once the other board partners get their models out. With the proper component set I can only imagine what this model can probably do. The cooler as it stands is nothing special, but it gets the job done and to my surprise considering how simple it is, the card stays cool and quiet even with a very high overclock set. Nvidia has successfully pulled off yet another very good performing card while knocking its regular 650 Ti models to low 100′s in the price range and making it tough for AMD to even get a foothold at the lower end. The GPU war has begun and now it’s just a question of who will be next to fire a shot across the bow.

In a week when nothing was really expected in the world graphics card releases, we saw two new sub-$200 options from AMD and NVIDIA that both changed market lineups. The Radeon HD 7790 offers a new piece of silicon and the first Sea Islands offering to consumers but despite the technological changes, it is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST that shakes things up in terms of raw gaming performance. At $169, the BOOST card is one of, if not THE, best card for the money. It would not surprise me to see some price adjustments from AMD almost immediately considering the HD 7790 hasn't made it to market yet. If the HD 7790 falls from $159/169 to $149 or even lower, it will still be a highly competitive option for low cost gamers. In truth, even with the introduction of the BOOST there are TONS of other great options within the same $50 of the GPU market. I just happen to think NVIDIA's GTX 650 Ti BOOST is the best.

The Nvidia GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics card offers substantially better performance at a great price.

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost adds a strong sub-$200 option to the company's lineup. Thanks to the added Boost clock algorithm, and a beefed up 192-bit memory interface, we see massive performance gains compared to the GTX 650 Ti without Boost. When averaging our performance results, we see a large 26% improvement over the GTX 650 Ti, which definitely makes the difference between "slow" and very playable at 1080p. Compared to AMD's lineup, we see a performance that is 3% higher than HD 7850 and 22% higher than the just-released HD 7790. Overclocking of our sample worked well and provided an easy 10% performance boost, which means that the overclocked GTX 650 Ti Boost almost matches GTX 660 performance. Maximum clocks are similar to what we've seen on the original GTX 650 Ti, but the relative clock increase is smaller because the newer GTX 650 Ti Boost comes with higher clock speeds out of the box.

With this new addition to the product stack, NVIDIA is keeping the old GTX 650Ti and reducing the price to around $114 with some non-reference cards priced slightly higher after rebates. By adding in the Boost clock feature and increasing the memory size and bus width, NVIDIA has put together a card that offers a massive boost in gaming performance over the previous incarnation of the card. You get FPS performance at 1080p with high settings that truly is playable, eliminating the need to ratchet down the quality settings just to get a playable frame rate. The opening price for the GTX 650Ti Boost of $169 is a fair price to pay for the performance it delivers.

In summary, the NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti BOOST video card targets mainstream gamers with a solid performing graphics solution that offers 2GB GDDR5 memory along with very fast clock speeds combined with GPU Boost technology. Ideally, this could become the go-to graphics card for under $170, giving enthusiasts enough overclock headroom to push it into GTX 660 territory while retaining the efficient temperatures and power consumption of the GTX 650 series. Since SLI is supported, adding a second video card to form a set once prices settle could effectively double performance for under $300. For mainstream gamers wanting to upgrade their aging hot-running power-hungry graphics card, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST is a value-packed option worth the money. Additionally, a 1GB GDDR5 version will debut next month for around $149. Benchmark Reviews recommends the GTX 650 Ti BOOST graphics card, and predict the series will earn popularity among gamers.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST is basically a GeForce GTX 660 with one SMX unit disabled for $30 less money. The performance of the card is impressive, GPU temperatures are solid and it has some overclocking headroom available!

Games aside, though, the GTX 650 Ti Boost offers excellent performance in its price range, coming fairly close to the GeForce GTX 660, a card that typically costs $40 or so more, even at its steepest discounts. (At the time we wrote this, Nvidia noted that its suggested retail pricing on stock GTX 660 partner cards was falling to $199.) And a $149 version of the GTX 650 Ti Boost, with just 1GB of memory, should be available in early April, possibly proving a good bargain option for gamers with lower-resolution monitors.

With the Radeon HD 7770 at $120, Radeon HD 7790 at $150, and Radeon HD 7850 above $180, Nvidia is rendering all three products ineffectual at their respective price points. With one swift stroke, the company engineered a hostile takeover of the $100-$200 market, increasing graphics performance at any given budget in that space. We're particularly excited about the price/performance of a $150 GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 1 GB. Family-wide reorganizations like this remind us of the days when fierce competition took the GeForce 8800 GT under $200.

At its most basic, NVIDIA’s GTX 650 Ti Boost represents the vanguard of a full court press against AMD’s entire sub-$225 product stack. It may not be a high performance graphics card per se but this is still an exciting product which has already contributed to lower prices in an extremely popular market segment. With a combination of great framerates, efficiency and disruptive pricing, the GTX 650 Ti Boost is simply the best graphics card available for budget-focused gamers.