NVIDIA GTX 1050 Roundup Featuring EVGA MSI and Zotac

Upgrading a PC can be a challenging task and while I pity those using an integrated graphics processor (IGP) to play games there is likely a good reason for it.  A good example would be playing games on a laptop, very few of these come with discrete graphics cards and if they do it increases the cost of the computer quite a bit.  You also have to consider your basic OEM computer either built by a large company like Dell or HP and those built by local companies attempting to compete for your business.  In both situations the PC builder is looking to make some money and will skimp on things like PSU size and onboard memory (eg installing one stick of memory instead of two)

For the user looking to raise their gaming performance and was unfortunate enough to have sub-standard hardware there is an affordable solution, the GeForce GTX 1050.

The GTX 1050 is a 75w GPU that will run without any external power connectors and will operate on systems with only a 300w PSU.  That includes many low costs systems built by OEMs that weren’t originally intended for gaming.  

In term of performance NVidia claims a 3x performance increase over the GTX 650 and 1.5x gain over the GTX 750Ti.  Both cards were good performers in their time but don’t fully support DX12.  This was indicated by the lack luster performance seen from the GTX 670 used as a reference in the benchmarking section.  If you look at 3DMark performance alone the GTX 670 is a proper equal to the GTX 1050 in older DX10 and DX11 game titles.

I was a little surprised to see how the Zotac GTX 1050 was actually faster than the EVGA GTX 1050 Superclocked in almost all of the tests despite the EVGA card having a higher factory overclock.  That isn’t all that uncommon in the overclocking world when you start to reach the thermal and power limits of the GPU things just get slow and the only way to speed up again is to slow down.

Inexpensive GeForce Performance

Only 2GB of video memory limits video resolution