NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 And GTX 1050 Ti Review: Low Power, Low Price Pascal

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on a Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-5960X octal-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR4 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" default / auto settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure optimal memory performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and the altest build of Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i7 Powered

Hardware Used: Intel Core i7-5960X (3GHz, Octa-Core) Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P (Intel X99 Chipset) Radeon RX 460 Radeon RX 470 Radeon RX 480 Radeon R9 390 GeForce GTX 950 GeForce GTX 960 GeForce GTX 970 EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti MSI GeForce GTX 1050 / 1050 Ti GeForce GTX 1060 16GB Corsair DDR4-2133 OCZ Vertex 4 Integrated Audio Integrated Network

Relevant Software:  Windows 10 Pro x64 (Build 1607) NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v368.19 / v375.57 Benchmarks Used: Unigine Heaven v4 3DMark "Fire Strike", "Time Spy" Thief MIddle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor Ashes Of The Singularity Hitman 2016 Steam VR Performance Test FRAPS

Unigine Heaven v4.0 Benchmark Pseudo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering as well.

Unigine Heaven

The GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti cards from MSI and EVGA finish about in middle of the pack here. All three of the cards have a marked advantage over the Radeon RX 460 and previous-gen GeForce GTX 950, but couldn't catch the Radeon RX 470.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end single GPU and CrossFire / SLI systems. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. And 80 million pixels are processed per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike

We saw a somewhat different trend in 3DMark Fire Strike. Here, The GeForce GTX 1050 falls in just behind the Radeon RX 460, but the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti cards from MSI and EVGA shoot well out in front of the RX 460. The RX 470, however, finished ahead of the Ti.