Home Technology Nvidia’s new GTX 1050 makes upgrading easier than ever

Nvidia’s new GTX 1050 makes upgrading easier than ever

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GeForce_GTX_1050_Ti_Partner_ASUS_1476727257

I understand the many drawbacks to PC gaming. Aside from the sometimes prohibitive pricing, building a PC is often a step too many for some looking to get into the market. The wires, the many, many requirements checks and the constant dread of things not working nicely with one another is often more than enough to keep people away, but it’s something Nvidia has been working on. The fruit of that labour is the GTX 1050 – probably the easiest graphics card to use ever.

The GTX 1050 and 1050Ti are the two latest cards in Nvidia’s crowded 10 series line, taking full advantage of their Pascal architecture to deliver entry-level gaming performance. The cards are incredibly small, with TDP values of just 75W for both. That means neither need external power, with the card just needing to be plugged into the PCI slot to get up and running. No wires, no fuss.

Nvidia are aiming at people just looking to get their feet wet with PC gaming with this card, as well as those just wanting a new card to keep up with the less demanding competitive games out there. On a mix of medium to high settings, Nvidia promises that the GTX 1050 will keep up with most modern titles at 1080p and 60FPS, pointing towards Overwatch, Dota 2 and Rise of the Tomb raider specifically. There was no mention of VR, because this isn’t the card for it.

The 1050 and 1050Ti also differ in small ways. The former will feature only 640 CUDA Cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory, while the Ti version boosts things up to 768 CUDA Cores and 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The GTX 1050 is set to retail for only $109 (R2000), while the Ti version will come in at $139 (R2600). That makes both extremely affordable options, and more so when you consider the frankly ridiculous trend of Pascal to punch above its specified weight.

GTX 1050 (2)

Nvidia isn’t going to be producing their own Founder’s Edition for this card given the entry-level target market, but manufacturers like ASUS, Gigabyte and EVGA will have their stock out as early as next week.

Last Updated: October 18, 2016

18 Comments

  1. Seems like quite a nice entry-level card.

    Reply

    • Viking Of Science

      October 18, 2016 at 15:39

      If you go for the Ti variant, 😛

      2GB isn’t enough VRam anymore….

      Reply

      • Geoffrey Tim

        October 18, 2016 at 15:50

        To run a decent HTPC? It’s perfect. For entry level gaming though, I’d definitely edge towards the Ti.

        Reply

        • Fox1 - Retro

          October 19, 2016 at 09:37

          R2600 is a crazy spend for a HTPC GPU.

          Reply

      • Dungeon of JJ

        October 18, 2016 at 16:02

        Yea for sure. I just upgraded from 2GB to 8GB recently, but I must say that my old 2GB card was still doing alright, though with newer titles it’s a stretch.

        Reply

      • Moscato

        October 19, 2016 at 18:26

        2GB of vram is fine at 1080p in many games.

        Pretty much any game you can run on 640 cuda cores will also not really push that limit…

        Reply

  2. Lizzard

    October 18, 2016 at 15:20

    I actually like this little thing, makes a smoother path to the 1080 – From a 560 That is

    Reply

  3. HairyEwok

    October 18, 2016 at 15:32

    People complain that there’s too many variants being released of the same card. I say it’s good, it gives the people a lot more options, thus a lot more ways to spend their money accordingly.

    Reply

    • Thorsten

      October 18, 2016 at 20:51

      Agreed. Love the fact that it doesn’t need an external power source. Makes a neat computer 😀

      Reply

  4. Hargrim

    October 18, 2016 at 15:40

    Tempting! Very tempting

    Reply

  5. HvR

    October 18, 2016 at 15:40

    Damn that is cheap.

    Suddenly new PC doesn’t seem like an unachievable task anymore.

    Stick with 1050Ti for the first year or so go for the next gen xx60 or bigger card year or 2 later. Especially since I’m more interested in strategy games.

    Reply

  6. Guava_Eater

    October 18, 2016 at 15:51

    3dMark scores?

    Reply

    • Alessandro Barbosa

      October 18, 2016 at 16:30

      Reviews are embargoed until next week

      Reply

      • Guava_Eater

        October 19, 2016 at 09:55

        awwwwww

        Reply

  7. Vulcha

    October 18, 2016 at 17:49

    How do you get R2000 from $109?

    Reply

    • Krabby Paddy

      October 18, 2016 at 18:58

      Approximate price when one includes import taxes and local retail markup.

      Reply

      • Vulcha

        October 18, 2016 at 23:37

        See, now that is fine. But then Lagz needs to say so in the article. Otherwise they make me think I missed something like a sudden plummet in the value of the Rand caused by political instability or some nonsense. Oh… never mind.

        Reply

  8. Fox1 - Retro

    October 19, 2016 at 09:38

    Finally a half decent successor to the 550Ti. For the kinda money Nvidia are asking I would rather hold out for AMD’s Vega cards early next year.

    Reply

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