MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB and GeForce GTX 1050 2GB Video Card Review
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
NVIDIA is aiming the GeForce GTX 1050 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti at the causal PC gamers that might be getting into eSports for the very first time. The performance you get at the $109 and $139 price points is better than ever. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB appears to be the best deal at the $109 price point as it beat the AMD Radeon RX 460 4GB in the majority of the tests that we ran and that is impressive since it has half the frame buffer. AMD slashed the price of the Radeon RX 460 2GB to $99 earlier this week and it appears that we know why they hurried up and adjusted their lower-end card pricing. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB graphics card at $139 is pretty interesting as it costs less than the AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB (starting at $169) and has pretty good performance for the price as long as you are willing to reduce image quality settings to dial in your framerate to 60 FPS averages. The GeForce GTX 1050 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti won’t be impressive to high-end gamers using greater than 1080P displays, but casual gamers with a 1080p display and a budget will find good value here. The eSports market is growing thanks to record prizes and these two new cards will help introduce PC gaming to new gamers. It is also enough card for MOBA gamers at 1080p!
The MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2GB OC Edition and MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB OC Edition video cards that we used for the review today are pretty much the base models offered by MSI. We were impressed by the temperatures, noise and performance had from the base model. The higher-end ‘Gaming’ series models have larger custom coolers and more impressive looks, but our temperature tests and benchmarks show that you really don’t need that for this series.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB cards are hitting the street today with pricing starting at $139 and going up from there. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 will see some limited availability today, but the bulk of the cards will be arriving before November 8th and they will feature prices starting at $109. Both cards are pretty solid at their respective price points, but between these two cards we’d highly recommend the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. That is because it offers significantly more performance and you really do need more than 2GB of memory for 1080P gaming these days. For example take a look at the memory usage on Gears of War 4 on the GeForce GTX 1050 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti below.
The GeForce GTX 1050 2GB is using all its memory, while the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB still has a little extra left at 1920 x 1080. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti was found to be 32% faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 in this game title and that performance difference is massive. It also goes to show why NVIDIA is charging $30 more (27.5%) for the Ti version.
Legit Bottom Line: The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1050 are the most affordable Pascal powered cards ever, but we favor the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti as we think it will be more future proof.