NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost adds a strong sub-$200 option to the company's lineup. Thanks to the added GPU Boost clock algorithm and a beefed up 192-bit memory interface, we see massive performance gains compared to the GTX 650 Ti without Boost. MSI's GTX 650 Ti Boost uses the company's famous TwinFrozr cooler and comes with a 50 MHz GPU overclock out of the box, which is about average when considering what's available on the market. Memory is unfortunately not overclocked, which would have been easy given how much headroom we saw in our manual testing. This overclock translates into just a 3% improvement in real-life performance, which is lower than what we've seen on other factory-overclocked cards. EVGA's card, for example, boosts up to 1250 MHz, while this card only goes up to 1175 MHz. MSI apparently used more conservative Boost settings in their BIOS. Compared to other cards, we found a large 28% improvement over the original GTX 650 Ti, which definitely makes the difference between "slow" and "very playable" at 1080p. Compared to AMD's lineup, we see performance that is 10% higher than the HD 7850 and 29% higher than the recently released HD 7790.

MSI's TwinFrozr cooler is well-known for being a good thermal solution, and the company was wise to use it on this card. It offers fantastic cooling performance and equally low noise levels. The card is essentially inaudible in both idle and load when installed into an actively cooled system, and it manages to do so without running into high temperatures. We've recently tested a triple-slot GTX 650 Ti Boost from Inno3D; the card tested today provides similar noise and temperature levels with just a dual-slot cooler. This is testament to how well the MSI heatsink works.

Overclocking on the MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost works well even without reaching the highest clock speeds. It still provides the highest maximum OC performance, but the difference to other cards is slim as NVIDIA's Boost clock algorithm equalizes the playing field.

The GTX 650 Ti Boost Gaming is available online for $175, which is just a $5 premium over the NVIDIA reference design—absolutely worth it. Given the performance increase out of the box and this reasonable price increase, the card actually delivers better performance per dollar than the reference design, so there really is no catch. Other cards, like the EVGA GTX 650 Ti SC, are clocked higher and run higher boost clocks but also cost more and are not as quiet. The GeForce GTX 660 non-Ti cards start at $200, which is another $25 spent, but they provide higher performance and include a Metro: Last Light coupon. When looking at what AMD offers, the HD 7850 is a bit slower and costs about as much as the MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost (but it includes a Bioshock Infinite coupon).