NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST Video Card Review

By Olin Coles

Manufacturer: NVIDIA Corporation
Product Name: GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST
Retail Price: Starting at $169.99 (Amazon | Newegg)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by NVIDIA.

With the economy on the rebound, gamers are coming out of hibernation with a hunger for modern DirectX11 graphics and realism. Since AMD has all but disappeared from the scene, NVIDIA has timed their affordable mainstream video card launch perfectly. Based on the NVIDIA Kepler GK106 architecture, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST delivers 2GB of 1502 MHz GDDR5 memory and 768 CUDA Cores operating at 980 MHz up to 1033+ with NVIDIA GPU Boost technology. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST graphics card using several highly-demanding DX11 video games.

By tradition, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX series offers enthusiast-level performance with features like multi-card SLI pairing. More recently, the GTX family has included GPU Boost application-driven variable overclocking technology. The GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST graphics card keeps with tradition in terms of performance by offering the capable GK106 GPU with 768 CUDA cores clocked to 980 MHz with 2GB of GDDR5 vRAM. Later next month the GTX 650 Ti BOOST will become available in a less-expensive ($150) 1GB GDDR5 version. Of course, NVIDIA’s Kepler GPU architecture adds proprietary features to both versions, such as: 3D Vision, Adaptive Vertical Sync, multi-display Surround, PhysX, and TXAA antialiasing.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST features a reference design that includes a 28nm Kepler GK106 GPU, which houses four SMX units and offers 768 CUDA Cores operating at a fixed base clock speed of 980 MHz with 64 texture units. There’s 2048 MB of GDDR5 video memory good for 144.2 GB/s bandwidth over a 192-bit interface, all clocked to 1502 MHz (6008 MHz data rate). In comparison to GeForce GTX 650, the new GTX 650 Ti BOOST offers twice the number of CUDA Cores and texture units, with faster core clocks and much more memory bandwidth. GTX 650 Ti BOOST adds faster speeds, more memory, and GPU Boost technology to the GTX 650 Ti.

Of the many platforms available for gamers to enjoy video games, there’s no question that the highest quality graphics come from PC. While game developers might not consider PC gaming as lucrative as entertainment consoles, companies like NVIDIA use desktop graphics to set the benchmark for smaller more compact designs that make it into notebooks, tablets, and smartphone devices. NVIDIA’s Kepler GPU architecture is an example of this, delivering unprecedented performance while operating cooler and consuming far less power than previous generation graphics cards. Gamers upgrading from the GeForce 9600 GT may see up to 600% performance increase, or 200% increase over the GeFroce GTX 550 Ti.

GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST offers all the same high-end features found on the top-end GTX video cards but with a much more affordable price tag. In addition to a new and improved Kepler GPU architecture with NVIDIA GPU Boost technology, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST video card delivers further refinement to the user experience. Smoother FXAA and adaptive vSync technology results in less chop, stutter, and tearing in on-screen motion. Adaptive vSync adjusts the monitor’s refresh rate whenever the FPS rate becomes too low to properly sustain vertical sync, thereby reducing stutter and tearing artifacts. NVIDIA TXAA helps deliver a film-style anti-aliasing technique with a mix of hardware post-processing, custom CG file style AA resolve, and an optional temporal component for better image quality.

NVIDIA’s product stack includes support for the following graphics cards (as of March 2013):

• GeForce GTX TITAN
• GeForce GTX 690
• GeForce GTX 680
• GeForce GTX 670
• GeForce GTX 660 Ti
• GeForce GTX 660
• GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST
• GeForce GTX 650 Ti
• GeForce GTX 650
• GeForce GT 640
• GeForce GT 630
• GeForce GT 620
• GeForce GT 610
• GeForce 210