Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti arrives to round out the Kepler line-up

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable, if far too short, exploration for us in evaluating our new GTX 650 Ti. It did extraordinarily well performance-wise comparing it to last generation’s GTX 550 Ti where it brings good performance value with better efficiency and performance than the older Fermi Ti card that it replaces. We are totally impressed with this cool-running mainstream “entry level” GTX Ti gaming card which totally runs away from it’s competitor, the HD 7770, and even solidly beats the similarly-priced fastest factory-clocked Sapphire Vapor-X HD 7770.

We see good overclockability with reasonable quietness at stock voltage and fan profile even when the GTX 650 Ti is overclocked and it scales well in performance. It is as quiet as the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 7770 and the Galaxy GTX 660, quiet cards indeed.

For its $149 price, it gives more than 70% of the performance of the GTX 660 which is priced at $229 and it runs away from even factory overclocked HD 7770s which are priced nearly the same.  Although the GTX 650 Ti generally is outclassed by the HD 7850, it is also priced about thirty dollars less.  Add in the bundled Assassins Creed 3, and the GTX 650 Ti becomes a great value.

Pros

• The GTX 650 Ti provides excellent performance for a $149 card and soundly beats even the overclocked Sapphire Vapor-X HD 7770 across the board.
• Overclockability is good and scaling is excellent.
• The cooling design is quiet and efficient
• 3D Vision 2 and PhysX enhance gaming immersion and both are improved using the GTX 650 Ti compared to the GTX 550 Ti which is not in the same performance class – upgrading from the GTX 550 Ti to the GTX 650 Ti brought a solid improvement, in some cases up to +50% improvement.
• Surround and 3D Vision Surround (plus an accessory display on some boards) can now be driven off of a single GTX 650 Ti by requiring a single passive adapter; HD 7770 generally requires two, and tearing is noticeably less with Surround compared to Eyefinity
• New AA allows for high performance without jaggies in deferred shading lighting engines; TXAA solves the shimmering and crawling when the camera is in motion
• Adaptive VSync reduces stuttering while retaining the advantages of minimizing tearing.
• The GTX 650 Ti becomes a great value when it is bundled with Assassin’s Creed 3 (!!)

Cons

• No SLI support.

The Verdict:

• If you are buying a $150 entry level gaming video card right now that is perfect for 1920×1080 as well as being great bang for buck, the GTX 650 Ti is a great choice especially considering that it is bundled with Assassin’s Creed 3. We feel it deserves ABT’s Editor’s Choice award since it absolutely destroys competing overclocked HD 7770 cards in its class and price range.

We do not know what the future will bring, but the Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti brings good value and a great performer to the latest member of the 28nm GeForce Kepler family. With great features like PhysX and the second generation of 3D Vision, you can be assured of immersive gaming by picking this card for 1920×1080 resolution.

If you currently game on an older generation video card such as a GTX 550 Ti or older, you will do yourself a big favor by upgrading. The move to a GTX 650 Ti will give you much higher performance than Fermi’s GTX 550 Ti as it is starting to struggle in many modern games at 1920×1080.

The competition is hot and AMD offers their own set of features including Eyefinity 2.0 and the faster and recently lower-priced HD 7770 GHz editions. The HD 7850 offers a lot of performance for its approximately $30 higher price than the GTX 650 Ti, and it also offers good overclockability.

Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT. Later this week, you can expect an evaluation of Cooler Master’s latest 1000W PSU! And you can expect more great reviews from Mario for our new mobile section; also expect a Kingston SSD evaluation faceoff between manstream and enthusiast SSDs as well as versus HDD.

And don’t forget to check our forums. ABT forum tech discussions are among the best to be found anywhere!

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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