# EVGA GTX 650 Ti SSC 2 GB



## W1zzard (Feb 4, 2013)

Today we have on our testbench the EVGA GTX 650 Ti SSC with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. The card runs at 1072 MHz GPU clock, which is higher than any other GTX 650 Ti available at this time. Using manual overclocking we could even increase memory clocks by 40%!

*Show full review*


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## Delta6326 (Feb 13, 2013)

Great review W1zz I love all your game benchmarks! I think the 7850 is a better option for the price being that it's faster. I can't wait till you 'hopefully" get a Titan


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## CJCerny (Feb 13, 2013)

Table on the 1st page of this review says this card has 1gb of RAM, not 2gb.


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## dj-electric (Feb 13, 2013)

Overclocking results actually quite surprised me. It's good to see such good overclocking capability on a mid-class NVIDIA GPU


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## W1zzard (Feb 13, 2013)

CJCerny said:


> Table on the 1st page of this review says this card has 1gb of RAM, not 2gb.



fixed. thanks


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## alienstorexxx (Feb 13, 2013)

wtf? 8.9? highly recommended? do i read the same review?

what's next "you can play games" on pros? c'mon..
also, didn't understand, to have 2gb is a pro or a con?

it looses against a 6870 wich is priced lower and it's an older generation. what's highly recommended? is the bussiness going so bad?

edit: and you forgot the 7850 1gb on those charts, because you could give 1 or 2 points less on final score if you compared to that gpu.


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## ColdRush (Feb 13, 2013)

alienstorexxx said:


> wtf? 8.9? highly recommended? do i read the same review?
> 
> what's next "you can play games" on pros? c'mon..
> also, didn't understand, to have 2gb is a pro or a con?
> ...



Well the does 6870 and 7850 use 30w more on average, that's a plus I suppose.

I agree that this isn't exactly a good deal though, the $150 base model Ti is a far better deal and will most likely overclock to or within range of the SSC specs.


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## W1zzard (Feb 13, 2013)

alienstorexxx said:


> wtf



looking forward to your next troll comment. i checked your previous comments, thought to myself "just one more", but no luck. come again


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## BigMack70 (Feb 13, 2013)

This review is far more positive than I would be about a card that gets more or less pasted by other similarly priced competing cards (7850 in either 1GB or 2GB flavors). I'm also not sure I see a use for the 2GB memory here other than to drive the price up - I really don't like this tactic that GPU manufacturers use of slapping more vram on slow cards that can't use it. In my opinion, it's just to take advantage of gullible consumers.

Anyways, it's always good to see what these budget cards can do - a lot of sites don't bother reviewing anything below about the $200-250 mark, so thanks for the info!

Looking forward to seeing the Titan review soon (hopefully)


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## Casecutter (Feb 13, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> This review is far more positive than I would be



I thought 8.9, was for this particular card quite charitable, being it does have a astronomical price and especially straddling it with 2Gb which isn't adding any value.

W1zzard is right in the a GTX650Ti is more a ease at 1680x.   When comparing a 7770 that cost $105-120 –AR, and then permit strong gains with OC'n they're still not out.  The 650Ti doesn’t exactly offer increased settings that categorically enhance the experience visually, while not a huge difference actual seat of the pants gameplay either.  For me a nice MSI Power Edition that might be had for $130 –AR, provides value and can see it's worth the little extra cost.  The things I like about the GTX650Ti is lower power consumption and performance per watt, and then models like EVGA that have rear exhaust. They're nice cards for upgrading an OEM box with a decent 350W PSU.

But there's no better purchase for 1920x than 7850 1Gb; which are $155 –AR more often than not.


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## alienstorexxx (Feb 13, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> looking forward to your next troll comment. i checked your previous comments, thought to myself "just one more", but no luck. come again



if you have a problem with trolls, just don't feed them. if you think my posture is arguable you can just name where you think i'm wrong.


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## BigMack70 (Feb 14, 2013)

Casecutter said:


> I thought 8.9, was for this particular card quite charitable, being it does have a astronomical price and especially straddling it with 2Gb which isn't adding any value.
> 
> W1zzard is right in the a GTX650Ti is more a ease at 1680x.   When comparing a 7770 that cost $105-120 –AR, and then permit strong gains with OC'n they're still not out.  The 650Ti doesn’t exactly offer increased settings that categorically enhance the experience visually, while not a huge difference actual seat of the pants gameplay either.  For me a nice MSI Power Edition that might be had for $130 –AR, provides value and can see it's worth the little extra cost.  The things I like about the GTX650Ti is lower power consumption and performance per watt, and then models like EVGA that have rear exhaust. They're nice cards for upgrading an OEM box with a decent 350W PSU.
> 
> But there's no better purchase for 1920x than 7850 1Gb; which are $155 –AR more often than not.



I'm just not sure how an overpriced card with extremely niche value, as this one clearly is, scores so highly. And I REALLY don't get how it comes "highly recommended", but I guess TPU may mean something different than what I think when I read of "highly recommended".

I can't see this card being "highly recommendable" to most people.

(edit) I'm not trying to troll the review, I'm just confused - and I'll give an example - this site's own 7970 Lightning review. It's a card that got slammed in the conclusion for being niche (due to the output config) and overpriced, and the score reflected that.


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## jsfitz54 (Feb 14, 2013)

@ W1zzard,

Would it be possible to include how these cards Fold or Crunch in the reviews?

Also, I am curious why you are running 3 x 2048 in your specs and not running dual channel pairs with 4 sticks of ram.


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## Ikaruga (Feb 14, 2013)

Thank you for the review. One more GB ram gives 5% extra performance, not much, but it's still something enthusiasts would appreciate if the price of the card wouldn't be so ridiculously high.

Nice to see again how well the 560ti responds to the memory OC, 22.8% over standard cards is really great indeed. I wonder why there are no cards with factory OC-ed memory, perhaps Nvidia doesn't allow it?


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## W1zzard (Feb 14, 2013)

Ikaruga said:


> One more GB ram gives 5% extra performance, not much, but it's still something enthusiasts would appreciate if the price of the card wouldn't be so ridiculously high.



actually the OC gives those 4-5%. If you look at BF3 2560 and Skyrim 2560 you can see a tiny increase beyond what you would expect, looking at the other resolutions


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## Ikaruga (Feb 14, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> actually the OC gives those 4-5%. If you look at BF3 2560 and Skyrim 2560 you can see a tiny increase beyond what you would expect, looking at the other resolutions



Interesting, thank you for the correction. Do you know the technical details why is this happening? I remember I saw performance gains in tests with more memory on stronger cards (in games like bf3,maxpayne3,etc), so why there is non here? 

Perhaps is it possible that there are so many cache misses because of the large texture LOD, that the bandwidth is simply not enough for the first GB let alone the second?


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## W1zzard (Feb 14, 2013)

jsfitz54 said:


> Also, I am curious why you are running 3 x 2048 in your specs and not running dual channel pairs with 4 sticks of ram.









?


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## Melvis (Feb 14, 2013)

Great little card, good performance to, but to expensive.

That is one thing i wish my GTX 650 Ti had and thats 2GB of memory it realy makes a difference, where mine is only 1GB and cost $154, but for an extra $55 its not worth it. (AUS) http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1442&products_id=21790

Im also surprised at the max temps, thats as low or lower then mine and mine has a bigger heatsink.

Overall i think a 8.9 is completely fair because id like to see anyone find another card that has that much performance, has such a small form factor that it will fit into any tiny/mini case and uses that little power, its a total winner in my eyes for tiny PC builds.


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## alienstorexxx (Feb 14, 2013)

Ikaruga said:


> Interesting, thank you for the correction. Do you know the technical details why is this happening? I remember I saw performance gains in tests with more memory on stronger cards (in games like bf3,maxpayne3,etc), so why there is non here?
> 
> Perhaps is it possible that there are so many cache misses because of the large texture LOD, that the bandwidth is simply not enough for the first GB let alone the second?



it hasn't enough gpu potential nor cuda cores. it's a middle-to-low end gpu, you can notice how it struggles on high resolutions, almost all kepler gpu's have that problem (against AMD)
nvidia make kepler the simplest they could, that way gpus have lower power consumption and don't loose potential on normal resolutions. it's an intelligent way to make a gpu, but in long terms, people who bought a 600 series may be dissapointed. time will tell. i don't see this gpus like a gt9500 or 9800gt that even today are running some the latest games (wich do not require dx11)


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## jsfitz54 (Feb 14, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> Quote:
> Originally Posted by jsfitz54
> Also, I am curious why you are running 3 x 2048 in your specs and not running dual channel pairs with 4 sticks of ram.
> 
> ...



SORRY, I meant under your own personal specs. Not the test bench.


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## W1zzard (Feb 14, 2013)

jsfitz54 said:


> SORRY, I meant under your own personal specs. Not the test bench.



oh .. i'm poor .. i'm using some leftover memory in my work rig .. back from when the vga test system was a triple channel i7-920


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## Ikaruga (Feb 14, 2013)

alienstorexxx said:


> you can notice how it struggles on high resolutions, almost all kepler gpu's have that problem (against AMD)



It struggles because of the 128bit wide bus (see how much extra it can give with the rams above 1800Mh), the 768 Kelper shaders are not the bottlenecks in this story. I already stated in some other threads, that it's simply not fair to bench these low-mid 128bit cards with the 4XAA utlra detail @ high resolutions, but I also understand that Wizzard wants to stay consistent between different generations. Perhaps including one 2XAA+4XAF medium resolution (900p, 1050p or maybe a 1080p) bench could prove to be more useful with cards like this.

The main reason behind that Nvidia "struggles" on ultra-high res is also mostly due to the 256 bit wide bus on the 660-680, but they were able to stop pushing things more and only release the mid-high GK104 because it was enough to compete against AMD that time.



alienstorexxx said:


> nvidia make kepler the simplest they could, that way gpus have lower power consumption and don't loose potential on normal resolutions. it's an intelligent way to make a gpu, but in long terms, people who bought a 600 series may be dissapointed. time will tell. i don't see this gpus like a gt9500 or 9800gt that even today are running some the latest games (wich do not require dx11)



I have to disagree, Kepler is built for gaming and it's performing beautifully in that regard, so let's see what the Titan will be capable of, then we will know for sure finally.

.................

I only asked my question because I did measure difference with earlier cards sporting extra memory (even if it was not that big), and I'm really curious what Nvida is doing which results in no benefit anymore with more Ram. Bf3 or Skyrim is clearly able to load up and use more than 1GB memory, yet we don't see any change in resolutions like 1200p or below. Is it some kind of a new memory management in the drivers or some new solution in the chip itself? I'm curious and I would like to know


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## BigMack70 (Feb 14, 2013)

Cards like this don't benefit from more vram because they're not powerful enough to drive the settings and framerates where they would begin to see a performance hit due to a lack of vram. Doesn't have anything to do with how Nvidia is designing the card in particular.


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## remixedcat (Feb 14, 2013)

I have this card and it's nice. Very good bang-for-the-buck card.


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## BigMack70 (Feb 14, 2013)

remixedcat said:


> I have this card and it's nice. Very good bang-for-the-buck card.



Your specs say you have the more sane 1GB version of the card rather than this overpriced 2GB one.


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## remixedcat (Feb 14, 2013)

Yes but it is an evga SSC one.


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## Casecutter (Feb 15, 2013)

remixedcat said:


> I have this card and it's nice. Very good bang-for-the-buck card... Yes but it is an evga SSC one.


Thanks for substantiating everyone’s comments. It’s not so much the EVGA SSC, it's the fact they option this one up for the unsuspecting.  This level of graphic prowess and on 128-Bit; 2Gb for gaming isn't any BfB.  There might be other specific uses for 2Gb, Photoshop etc; but commonly the buying public isn’t cognitive of what/why their purchasing… Just that it must be *more-better*!


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## Baum (Feb 17, 2013)

Thank you for the benchmark 

most sites bench the heck out of expensive cards but most of the time non-enthusiasts want some power and i can't go with the 200€ card 


for myself i just picked up a Palit GTX 650 1GB DDR5 back in 2012/november for:


Spoiler



89€ online



runs any game i've tested, power consumption is good, just the fan is foo but i bought a arctic accelero passive one for 20€

i think i am no enthusiast any more


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