Final thoughts and rating
What does all of this mean for the gamer? Well, it becomes our second-favourite graphics card under £150 right now, only eclipsed by said HD 7850 1GB.The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics processor is a long-overdue introduction into the crucial sub-£150 market. This new GPU bears striking similarity to the pricier GeForce GTX 660 - it is the same, save for a loss of one of five SMX units - thus rendering its retail name a misnomer.
Marketing decisions aside, a proven GK106 architecture leads to full-HD gaming performance that is more than satisfactory when running medium/high-quality settings in many of today's latest games, and its 25 per cent-plus improvement over a GTX 650 Ti is genuinely telling as it marks the difference between playable and what we consider smooth frame-rates.
The £145 GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB is also faster than the recently introduced, cheaper Radeon HD 7790 GPU, and it generally matches the numbers laid down by the next AMD GPU up, the HD 7850 1GB, which is still selling for £125-plus, despite AMD issuing end-of-life warnings.
What does all of this mean for the gamer? Well, it becomes our second-favourite graphics card under £150 right now, only eclipsed by said HD 7850 1GB that, for now, is further augmented by shipping with BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider games.
We believe the same-architecture GTX 650 Ti Boost equipped with a 1GB framebuffer would make even more sense if priced at £125, especially if a card partner can rustle-up a smaller PCB ideal for small-form-factor systems.
The Good
Very competent 1080p gaming performance
25 per cent-plus faster than GTX 650 Ti
Cool and quiet
Comfortably beats Radeon HD 7790 OC cards
Has potential for small-form-factor gamingThe Bad
2GB framebuffer seems wasted
No bundled games: Radeon HD 7850 still a better betHEXUS rating
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB
HEXUS Awards
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB
HEXUS Where2Buy
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost graphics card is available to purchase from Scan Computers*.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.
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