Introduction
The sub-$200 market-segment has been NVIDIA's problem area in terms of price-performance competitiveness with AMD, even though the company has had higher volumes. Most games released for the competitive gaming crowd run great on sub-$300 graphics cards, and it's only blockbuster AAA titles with cutting-edge production designs that prompt people to invest in faster graphics solutions, where NVIDIA has established an unbeatable lead.
NVIDIA is getting hawkish and wants itself a bigger slice of the sub-$200 market-segment targeting e-Sports players. The company launched the $139.99 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and $109.99 GTX 1050 earlier this month. The two SKUs are based on NVIDIA's smallest implementation of its "Pascal" GPU architecture, the GP107 silicon. This tiny chip packs up to 768 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory on the GTX 1050 Ti.
These are still "Pascal" CUDA cores that tick at 1.35-1.45 GHz. NVIDIA's decision to go with a 128-bit wide memory bus shows that the GTX 1050 Ti has been built to a cost (with no more than four memory chips), which prepares NVIDIA for a price war with the better-endowed, but costlier to make AMD offerings. NVIDIA managed to get the power consumption of the GTX 1050 Ti below the 75W mark, which makes it capable of sustaining itself on slot power alone. Its nearest rival from AMD, the Radeon RX 470 4 GB, needs an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector to feed its 120W TDP setup.
In this review, we are testing the ASUS GeForce GTX 1050 Ti STRIX OC, a premium custom design graphics card by ASUS that combines a factory-overclocked GTX 1050 Ti implementation with the company's signature dual-fan cooling solution, which turns its fans off when the GPU is idling, and a custom-design PCB that features an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector to help bolster the card's overclocking headroom.
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Market Segment Analysis | GeForce GTX 950 | Radeon RX 460 | GeForce GTX 1050 | GeForce GTX 960 | Radeon R9 380 | GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | ASUS GTX 1050 Ti STRIX | Radeon RX 470 | Radeon R9 390 | GeForce GTX 970 | Radeon RX 480 | GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB |
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Shader Units | 768 | 896 | 640 | 1024 | 1792 | 768 | 768 | 2048 | 2560 | 1664 | 2304 | 1152 |
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ROPs | 32 | 16 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 64 | 56 | 32 | 48 |
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Graphics Processor | GM206 | Baffin | GP107 | GM206 | Tonga | GP107 | GP107 | Ellesmere | Hawaii | GM204 | Ellesmere | GP106 |
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Transistors | 2940M | 3000M | 3300M | 2940M | unknown | 3300M | 3300M | 5700M | 6200M | 5200M | 5700M | 4400M |
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Memory Size | 2 GB | 4 GB | 2 GB | 2 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | 4 GB | 4 GB | 8 GB | 4 GB | 8 GB | 3 GB |
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Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
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Memory Bus Width | 128 bit | 128 bit | 128 bit | 128 bit | 256 bit | 128 bit | 128 bit | 256 bit | 512 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 192 bit |
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Core Clock | 1024 MHz+ | 1200 MHz | 1354 MHz+ | 1127 MHz+ | 970 MHz | 1290 MHz+ | 1380 MHz+ | 1206 MHz | 1000 MHz | 1051 MHz+ | 1266 MHz | 1506 MHz+ |
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Memory Clock | 1653 MHz | 1750 MHz | 1752 MHz | 1753 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1752 MHz | 1752 MHz | 1650 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1750 MHz | 2000 MHz | 2002 MHz |
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Price | $120 | $120 | $110 | $175 | $175 | $140 | $177 | $170 | $290 | $235 | $250 | $210 |
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