Evga Nvidia Geforce Gtx 1050 Gaming Graphic Card Review

Verdict

The best-value low-budget GPU for eSports gamers.

Pros

• Corking eSports performance
• Can play AAA games at Medium settings
• Lots of compact cards available
• Very low power consumpion

Cons

• More than expensive than rivals
• 2GB memory limits time to come potential

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £110.00
• 640 CUDA cores
• 2GB GDDR5 memory
• ane,354MHz core clock
• 1,455MHz heave clock
• TDP: 75W (PCI-E bus powered)

What is the Nvidia GTX 1050?

Looking to build a gaming rig for as little greenbacks as possible? The Nvidia GTX 1050 is the cheapest Pascal-generation graphics card available, and is capable of playing some of the most popular eSports games around in Full HD. Such games include the likes of Overwatch, CounterStrike: Global Offensive and Fortnite.

But this card isn't just for eSports: like the competing AMD Radeon RX 460, this GPU is capable of playing the latest games at Full HD if you're willing to dial dorsum your settings but a piddling. It tin fifty-fifty run the likes of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Civilisation VI after a bit of tweaking.

Cheers to Overclockers Great britain for supplying this review unit

First and foremost, though, this is a GPU that'due south best suited to ultra-budget PCs, or every bit an upgrade to a much older GPU that doesn't have an external power connector. Thanks to its low power consumption, you lot'll also discover the Nvidia GTX 1050 in fantastic all-round laptops such as the Dell XPS fifteen and bargain gaming laptops like the Dell G3 15.

The model on review here is EVGA's interpretation, which retails for around £110. This is pretty much the going rate for the GTX 1050 and is fairly representative of the 1050 market as a whole. While this review will brand comparisons with its closest competitor, the RX 460, the two sit in slightly different categories.

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Nvidia GTX 1050 – Specs and Pattern

The GTX 1050 uses Nvidia's ultra-efficient Pascal architecture, used in the 1050 Ti, 1060, 1070 and class-leading GTX 1080. If this battle was won just on ability efficiency, there would be no contest hither.

But at that place'southward more to information technology. This is the nearly stripped-down Pascal chip around with just 640 CUDA cores. This lack of cores is made up for past a high boost clock speed of one,455MHz on this particular model. It also comes equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

EVGA has opted for a meaty design, with the carte du jour measuring just 145mm in length. This ways it will fit into the nigh compact gaming rigs, although since it's dual-top, you'll need to consider clearance below your motherboard's PCI-Eastward slot.

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Information technology'south cooled by a small heatsink and a single fan, and comes in EVGA's adequately obviously but stylish black and gray plastic shroud.

This is i surface area the Nvidia GTX 1050 has quite an advantage over the RX 460: there are many more compact GTX 1050s on the market place, and modest RX 460s are really only offset to announced.

Yous become DisplayPort 1.4, DVI-D and HDMI 2.0b connectors, matching the RX 460 for outputs. In that location'south no ATX power connectors to be constitute: this card is powered entirely by the PCI-E omnibus.

Nvidia GTX 1050 – Performance Benchmarks

I benchmarked the GTX 1050 in our regular exam machine, which has the following components on lath:

• Motherboard: Asus Z170-Deluxe
• Processor: Intel Core i5-6600K (Overclocked to 4.8GHz)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2666MHz, 16GB DDR4
• Libation: Corsair H60 liquid cooler
• PSU: Corsair CX750M
• SSD: Samsung 850 EVO
• OS: Windows x Pro 64-chip

Keep in mind that if you're adding the Nvidia GTX 1050 to a much older arrangement with slower memory, fewer processing cores and slower storage – which is where I imagine plenty of GTX 1050s will end upwards – your results might differ considerably, particularly in the AAA games tested here.

I ditched TrustedReviews' usual suite of benchmarks here and focused on the types of games for which the GTX 1050 is designed. I swapped out Tomb Raider and GTA V for Overwatch and CS:GO, although I kept both Hitman and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor to detect out how capable this card is when playing AAA games at Medium settings.

The results here aren't comparable to our other GPU tests (aside from the RX 460), which were carried out at High and Ultra settings.

CounterStrike: Global Offensive

Past far the easiest game on exam, CS:Become is a fast-paced shooter played past eSports professionals at the highest level. Pretty much any graphics card can play it, even integrated Intel Hd Graphics. Still, in these sorts of games, more frames per 2d is always ameliorate, especially if you have a loftier-end monitor with a very high refresh charge per unit.

I set CS:Go to Loftier settings at Full Hd, with no frame rate limits to see how far the GTX 1050 would stretch.

Not surprisingly, the GTX 1050 achieved a scintillating 256fps in this test, achieving a score that was 19% greater than the cheaper RX 460.

Overwatch

More challenging than CS:GO but ever pop, Overwatch is another FPS title that'due south loaded with particle and lighting furnishings. I turned information technology up to High to see what you can expect at Full Hd.

Again, the GTX 1050 made lite piece of work of Overwatch, achieving an average frame rate of 112fps. That's 28% faster than the RX 460 at identical settings. Keep in heed that Overwatch is very good at using graphics settings that match your GPU perfectly, so RX 460 owners won't necessarily accept a worse time.

Hitman

This GPU isn't fabricated for AAA gaming, but why limit yourself? Hitman is one of the most challenging games with a built-in benchmark, so this should push the GTX 1050 to its limits. I ran the benchmark at Medium settings to avoid crippling the 2GB of memory. The test was conducted in Direct3D 12 mode, which tends to favour AMD.

The score here was 46fps, around 12% slower than the RX 460. This wasn't unexpected, nonetheless. Running the GTX 1050 in DirectX 11 mode fabricated for much higher frames per second, well above 55fps.

Eye-earth: Shadow of Mordor

The last benchmark is some other, slightly older AAA title to test the GPU's power to handle lots of explosion and weather effects. It was run on Medium settings at Full HD.

In this final gaming test, the GTX 1050 scored 79.1fps, merely 9% faster than the RX 460, which closed the gap considerably hither.

3DMark: Burn Strike Extreme

I also ran a synthetic benchmark, which showed up a serious discrepancy between the GTX 1050 and the RX 460. Nvidia'southward GPU managed a result of 3,201 – 28% faster than the RX 460. This result is an outlier and shouldn't touch on your buying decision, but it nonetheless shows that when both cards are pushed across their limits, the GTX 1050 seems to handle itself improve.

Ability consumption

Power consumption is the kicker. The GTX 1050 has a tiny TDP (thermal blueprint power) of just 75W, meaning information technology draws all its ability from your motherboard. On lath our high-finish, overclocked PC during the Hitman benchmark, the entire system drew just 150W; that's 61W less than the RX 460.

That 75W TDP is as well the aforementioned as the GTX 1050 Ti, which will set you lot back nigh £140 – but cyberspace you performance that's much improve for AAA games.

Should I buy the Nvidia GTX 1050?

The GTX 1050 is the finest instance notwithstanding of Nvida's Pascal architecture being put to good use. It might not manage incredible benchmark results, but as a replacement component for an former or broken GPU, information technology'southward fantastic; and information technology shouldn't require you to upgrade your power supply.

Given that the going rate for a GTX 1050 is around £110, your closest competition here is the RX 460, which retails for between £90 and £110. Normally I'd just say purchase the most expensive GPU you can beget, but I think in this case the increment in performance offered by the GTX 1050 outweighs its higher toll.

If you can scrape together an extra £20, it's absolutely worth it.

Verdict

The all-time-value depression-budget GPU for eSports gamers.

Thanks to Overclockers UK for supplying this review unit

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Source: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/nvidia-gtx-1050

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