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Review: ASUS GeForce GTX 650 Ti Direct CU II TOP

by Tarinder Sandhu on 15 October 2012, 14:00 2.5

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabnp5

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Testing methodology

ASUS GeForce GTX 650 Ti Direct CU II TOP spec

GPU Comparisons

Graphics Card GPU Clock
(MHz)
Stream
Processors
Shader Clock
(MHz)
Memory Clock
(MHz)
Memory Bus
(bits)
Graphics Driver Approx price
ASUS GeForce GTX 650 Ti Direct CU II TOP (1,024MB) 1,033 768 1,033 5,400 128 GeForce 306.38 beta £160
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti (1,024MB) 925 768 925 5,400 128 GeForce 306.38 beta £115
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2,048MB) 980 (1,033) 960 980 (1,033) 6,008 192 GeForce 306.38 beta £170
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1,024MB) 900 192 1,800 4,104 192 GeForce 306.38 beta £90
AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2,048MB) 860 1024 860 4,800 256 Catalyst 12.9 beta £150
AMD Radeon HD 7770 (1,024MB) 1,000 640 1,000 4,500 128 Catalyst 12.9 beta £100
AMD Radeon HD 6870 (1,024MB) 900 1,120 900 4,200 256 Catalyst 12.9 beta £120

HEXUS High-End Test Bench

Processor Intel Core i7-3770K (3.50GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
CPU Cooler Intel reference E97378-001
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Memory 8GB Patriot Viper 3 (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 1,600MHz
Power Supply Corsair AX750W
Storage Device Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD
Optical Drive Generic 24x DVD-RW
Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Monitor BenQ EW2430
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit, SP1)

HEXUS Mid-range Benchmark Suite

3D Benchmarks Mode and Resolutions Quality Settings
3DMark 11 DX11 at 1,280x720 and 1,920x1,080 Performance and Extreme Presets
Aliens vs. Predator DX11 at 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,080 4xAA, 16xAF, Maximum Image Quality
Batman: Arkham City DX11 at 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,080 4xMSAA, Very High Preset
Battlefield 3 DX11 at 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,080 0x MSAA, 16xAF, High Preset
Crysis 2 DX11 at 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,080 4xAA, Very High Preset, DX11 and High-Res Textures
DiRT Showdown DX11 at 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,080 4xMSAA, High Preset
Just Cause 2 DX10 at 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,080 8xMSAA, High Preset
LuxMark 2.0 OpenCL GPUs-only Sala (488,000+ triangles) and Room (2,000,000+ triangles)
General Benchmarks Description
Power Consumption To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record mains power draw both when idle and while playing Batman: Arkham City
Temperature To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record GPU core temperature both when idle and while playing Batman: Arkham City
Noise A PCE-318 meter is used to record noise levels when idle and while playing Batman: Arkham City

Notes

We've gone the whole nine yards and tested, from scratch, seven graphics cards for this review, all on the latest drivers. The in-game settings have been downgraded a touch from those used in our high-end suite; there's little point in hammering mid-range cards with unnecessary load. We've run at the lower 1,680x1,050 resolution, as well.

The comparison cards encompass interesting choices. From NVIDIA's side it makes sense to look at the next GPU up, GTX 660, and the GeForce GTX 550 Ti - the card ostensibly replaced by the GTX 650 Ti. From AMD, we have the Radeon HD 7770 1GB, a last-generation HD 6870, which many readers purchased for the same kind of cash as the GTX 650 Ti retails for now. Lastly, stepping it up a notch, the roughly price-comparable Radeon HD 7850 2GB is rolled in.

In the interests of fairness, any GPU vendor-specific technologies are disabled during benchmarking. For example, NVIDIA-exclusive features such as PhysX in Batman: Arkham City and the Bokeh Filter in Just Cause 2 are not enabled. Last but not least, all cards in the ensuing graphs are reference - no factory-overclocked models allowed!