NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti Reviewed and Benchmarked

[Frostea23]

Tom's Hardware. AnandTech.

Anyone else find the benchmarks rather disappointing [although, not surprising]?

It is 13-14% cheaper than the 7850 [before any rebates for either card] but also performs [depending the game and resolution] 30-50% worse, with the only major exception being Battlefield 3.

Unless they absolutely cannot afford to spend the extra $20, why would someone want to buy it if the Performance:Price ratio is so inferior? On top of that, in certain games it performs only slightly better than a 7770, which is substantially cheaper.

[Enhshamanlol]

From what I've seen from a few videos, The only diff from a 650 and 650 TI is the min FPS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmJly...&feature=g-u-u)
Kinda ehhhhhhhh for the price.....

[jmt]

With 7850's bouncing as low as $160 pre-Black Friday, you'd almost be retarded to buy this card. The 650/660 are a little late to the game and unless NV makes some drastic price cuts ($30+), they're not going to be competitive with AMDs offerings.

[Frostea23]

With 7850's bouncing as low as $160 pre-Black Friday, you'd almost be retarded to buy this card. The 650/660 are a little late to the game and unless NV makes some drastic price cuts ($30+), they're not going to be competitive with AMDs offerings.

Pretty much what I've been thinking. NVIDIA has to commit to significant price reductions to be competitive with AMD's aggressive price cuts.

[lokithor]

I was always under the impression that x50 in the nvidia series weren't meant to be gaming cards. Am I under the worng impression?

[Butler Log]

I was always under the impression that x50 in the nvidia series weren't meant to be gaming cards. Am I under the worng impression?

They are right on the line between media pc and gaming, they can generally handle games at low-mid settings and 1080p or lower resolutions. Still not as good price/performance as AMD's offerings in that price bracket though.

[glo]

Pretty much what I've been thinking. NVIDIA need to commit to significant price reductions to be competitive with AMD's aggressive price cuts.

They can't cut prices for multiple reasons, it's a long story. Here's a basic timeline of events for Nvidia over the past 7~ months:

1. Nvidia announces two new architectures for their 6xx line, GK110 for the high end, GK 104 for the mid end.

2. Nvidia decides to completely scrap GK110 claiming that it wasn't necessary to compete with AMD's current offerings, and that GK104 would be enough.

3. Nvidia ends up having terrible yields (way too many defective chips coming off the line) with GK104, and it all but leaks out that the real reason GK110 never saw the light of day was due to them simply not being able to manufacture the card without a tremendous amount of defective units (poor yields).

4. Nvidia releases their intended mid end chip as the GTX 680, GTX 670 and GTX 660 ti. This is the reason all of those cards have a shitty 256bit membus and a low amount of VRAM in comparison to AMD's offerings. Again, the architecture was supposed to be for the mid end, not the high end. They didn't have the time to band-aid said architectural issues before release.

5. Nvidia takes forever and a day to release very disappointing mid to low end cards. This is primarily due to them not even having an architecture prepped for them (again, they were betting on GK110 and GK104 being the basis for this generation).

Why can't they drop prices on the 670, 660 ti, etc? Because their top 3 cards all share the same exact architecture, and no matter how hard Nvidia tried to gimp the lower tiers, they couldn't create a significant performance gap between them. They can't just cut down say the GTX 670 without ALSO cutting down the GTX 680 along with it. They would end up selling no GTX 680s since the majority would not justify a 35% price increase for a 2-5% performance increase between the two cards.

Why can't they just drop the prices of all cards together? That brings us back to poor yields. Due to Nvidia having a much higher cost per chip made than they usually do, they have veeeery little wiggle room with pricing before they start making no money on them.

Basically, Nvidia screwed up pretty bad this generation, and this is why AMD is absolutely walking all over them in price to performance ratios. There's no viable card from Nvidia right now aside from the GTX 660 (non TI). AMD outclasses them at every other possible price point, especially with high res / multi monitor gamers (AMD's high end has a 384bit membus like high end cards should have).

[Frostea23]

Responding to Glo: damn, yeah, I completely forgot about the GK110 and the 28 nm yield problem. No wonder the prices seem so controlled and in-line with each other compared to the AMD cards, which seem to only be getting cheaper. Ridiculously cheap in some cases [7770 comes to mind].

[MMKing]

Basically, Nvidia screwed up pretty bad this generation, and this is why AMD is absolutely walking all over them in price to performance ratios. There's no viable card from Nvidia right now aside from the GTX 660 (non TI). AMD outclasses them at every other possible price point, especially with high res / multi monitor gamers (AMD's high end has a 384bit membus like high end cards should have).

After reading your post, Nvidias problem with the 400 series springs to mind. Not that the problems where similar, but in the way that the 1st generation of a new architecture brings the worst from Nvidia. I only hope that this won't be a re-occurring problem in the future. For now we have AMD, but i hope Nvidia comes back much stronger in the 700 series.

[glo]

Yeah, drawing the comparison between 4xx issues and this generation, while different, are (IMO) results of them trying to move too quickly. The 4xx line wouldn't have had most of its issues if they had just went for more reasonable memory/core specs instead of trying to reinvent the wheel performance wise. Same could be said this time around, they should have known before it was too late that GK110/104 would have had yield issues and adjusted to GK104 as the high end platform long before they did. Would have given them time to structurally adjust memory bandwidth and the such.

[Milkshake86]

Yeah, drawing the comparison between 4xx issues and this generation, while different, are (IMO) results of them trying to move too quickly. The 4xx line wouldn't have had most of its issues if they had just went for more reasonable memory/core specs instead of trying to reinvent the wheel performance wise. Same could be said this time around, they should have known before it was too late that GK110/104 would have had yield issues and adjusted to GK104 as the high end platform long before they did. Would have given them time to structurally adjust memory bandwidth and the such.

This is why Nvidia will be releasing the 685- or have some one offs of the 685-. Whatever they have of GK110 available will be planted into a high priced specialty 685 and shipped around the globe. The talk is that the 685 should be very close in performance to the 690.

GeForce GTX 685 (GK110) GeForce GTX 680 (GK104)
CUDA Cores 2304 1536
Memory Size 4096 MB 2048/4096 MB
Memory Interface 512-bit 256-bit
Release Date September-October March
GPU GeForce Kepler GK110 28nm GeForce Kepler GK104 28nm
Power Draw ~250W 195W
Performance 120-125% 100%

Memory bus cuda cores and power consumption should give us a reasonable idea of the things possible performance, but granted it is Nvidia and we dont have the card or driver updates for it so a month after shipping it could be godlike.

[Fascinate]

Really really glad i bought a 465 last year for 130 bucks, gtx 660 is too expensive and a 650ti is slower for more money...

Best deal on the market is a 560 SE for 130 now...

And ive actually seen the 560 SE on sale for 110.00 without rebates if you keep an eye on it.

[glo]

Really really glad i bought a 465 last year for 130 bucks, gtx 660 is too expensive and a 650ti is slower for more money...

Best deal on the market is a 560 SE for 130 now...

And ive actually seen the 560 SE on sale for 110.00 without rebates if you keep an eye on it.

650 TI keeps pace with a 470 minus Crysis, so it's obviously outpacing a 465 (and 560 SE):

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/680?vs=519

6850 is stronger than a 560 SE as well at the same price point.

[Fascinate]

Ya but at 110.00 (ive seen at a couple times) the 560se is a better value imo. And ya gotta remember, i purchased the 465 at 130 so thats still 30-35 cheaper. And i agree the 6850 is a better value when the 560se isnt on sale at 110.00.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 07:20 AM ----------

Also, i count the 470 ahead of the 650ti in more of those benches than vice-verse. And i mean the ones that are "higher is better".

[Butler Log]

Ya but at 110.00 (ive seen at a couple times) the 560se is a better value imo. And ya gotta remember, i purchased the 465 at 130 so thats still 30-35 cheaper. And i agree the 6850 is a better value when the 560se isnt on sale at 110.00.

HD 7770 is usually available for 110 bucks, has a minimal performance reduction and draws much less power.

[Fascinate]

Its really not minimal tho, 560se is quite a bit faster than a 7770, especially blizzard games.