Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 3GB Review: (Mostly) Faster Than 1050 2GB

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dudmont

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These 1050s are begging for some OEM to add a 6pin PCIE connector and rework the power limits on the cards. With good cooling, I'm betting 2GHZ isn't out of the question, with a good GPU.
 

King_V

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Well, our somewhat opposing speculations when the 3GB version announced pretty much are BOTH confirmed with this test.

Sometimes it achieves parity with the 1050Ti, and sometimes it dips below 1050 performance.

Depends on the game.

One thing neither of us considered in our conversation - the need for higher clocks pushes up power consumption to the point where spikes occasionally exceed the specs for the PCIe slot.

Still, the results are interesting - and my curmudgeonly side somewhat objects to the idea of cutting memory bandwidth and compensating for it by cranking up the power.
 

Giroro

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Since this is basically an overclocked 1050 ti with one memory chip missing, I figure it should be no problem to overclock any 1050 Ti to the same rate as the 1050 3GB.
 

BulkZerker

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Second paragraph of the article.
"According to our sources, it really doesn’t. Slowly but surely, GeForce GTX 1050 3GB cards will start replacing 2GB boards, particularly as the 512MB memory chips used on those 2GB implementations become harder to source. "
 

cangelini

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I've been playing with this a bit. Wanted to get the GDDR5 fast enough to give 112 GB/s but realistically it's going to take down-clocking the 1050 2GB, overclocking the 3GB card, and then seeing what difference the missing ROP partition/L2 makes. Will continue trying to come up with a good comparison.
 

cangelini

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It *is* a real product. There's a model number and everything :) I've been itching to do something with graphics for months!
 

stdragon

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The entire point of the 1030 and 1050 series is so that you're not required to have a PSU connector. While I get bus powered GPUs are not high-end gamer market products, they do make for good low to mid-range upgrade; specifically for OEM computers such as Dell and HP units. Though honestly most of those budget machines don't have a 300W PSU which is what nVidia is requiring as minimum for for a 1050 card.
 

Tom_207

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So what I read was a defective GP107 running higher clock speeds draws more power, makes perfect sense.
 


Well at such a low level GPU hierarchy, you are not going to see as big of a leap as you would say in higher level 9xx vs. 10xx GPUs. Not only that, but 3GB vs. 2GB doesn't mean much if you only have a 128-bit memory bandwidth bus and clock speeds won't help that much more either. It's like trying to push more traffic on a clogged freeway.

And if I could only afford this level of a GPU for PC gaming in this day in age with Gen-8 console gaming graphics quality for 1080p and optimized games for utilizing that, I'd just buy a console (no offense intended as one who owns a retro gaming Pentium IV PC running a GTX 275).

 

cangelini

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From the analysis on that page: "Nvidia dominated in StarCraft II, with all three GeForce cards hitting a platform-imposed bottleneck." Because that combination of settings is limited by something other than graphics, the variation in performance isn't indicative of those three cards' capabilities.
 

ET3D

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Worth mentioning is that NVIDIA's PlayReady 3.0 implementation requires a card with at least 3GB, so people who want a cheap HTPC card for Netflix in 4K (and a bit of 1080p gaming on the side) will now have another option.
 

80-watt Hamster

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Right? This article inspired me to look at how my R9 380 (now with one dead fan) stacks up in the current market. It's fascinating that there are, at the moment, exactly zero cards available that outperform or even equal it for the $180 I paid in January 2016. (Substitute GTX 960 if Team Green.) One can easily spend that or much more on a 1050 ti for less performance.
 

King_V

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I wondered about that as well, but immediately below, it's stated:

Nvidia dominated in StarCraft II, with all three GeForce cards hitting a platform-imposed bottleneck.

So, my assumption would be that the slight variation between their FPS ratings are probably within a margin of error, and possibly that ordering is not consistently reproducible.

That's just a guess on my part, though.

EDIT: ah, right, cangelini already answered this question.
 
You know you can put Aloe on the itch.

VGA cards are still way over priced and stock is still an issue. Why not modify the gaming cards so they don't do the hash for crypto mining well.

 
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