Article Index

ZOTAC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Australian ReviewGEFORCE GTX 1050 gives great bang-for-buck
 
GTX 1050 is fast, small, runs cool and is the right price. In this review we compare Zotac's GTX 1050 to Gigabyte's GTX 950 OC WindForce and EVGA's GTX 960 SSC in Dirt Rally, Ashes of the Singularity, Rise of the Tomb Raider, GTA V  and Doom to determine if GTX 1050 is worthy of praise. It is.

Introduction

I was not that impressed with the GTX 950 when it launched, the performance was there but I felt the value proposition was not, especially for the AU market. Both the GTX 960 and 950 share the same 2nd Generation NVIDIA 'Maxwell' GM206 GPU with a different number of enabled cores (1024 versus 768) and different core and memory clock speeds. Using such a 'big' GPU in a cheaper product with cores disabled is not the most cost effective way to make a mainstream GPU.

With some of the GTX 950s using the full GTX 960 board design and coolers, this provided a question worth considering whether a gamer/enthusiast should pay a little more for the full GTX 960 which could last a little longer and traditionally its the parts that are branded '60' that provide the most performance per dollar.

The GTX 750/Ti did things differently with a small, cheaper GPU (1st Generation 'Maxwell' GM107) and a cheap board design for the most part. The model had the right strategy, targeting cost-concious gamers but for then 2nd Generation Maxwell refresh a dedicated small and cheap part was skipped, likely due to chip yields with NVIDIA recycling faulty GM206 chips meant for GTX 960s into the 950 product.

12 months after the GTX 950 release we now have the GTX 1050/Ti based on a smaller 14nm Pascal architecture GPU, bus powered, runs cool, provides OC headroom if desired, is faster than the competition on paper and importantly both boards launch at a lower price than the GTX 950 launched at.

All these aspects combined put my mind at ease and the opportunity to have a hands-on with the GPU only went to prove how the 1050 board and GP107 Pascal GPU is a winning formula for the cost-conscious gamer.

NVIDIA GP107 GPU GTX 1050 die shot

Not everyone can afford a GTX 1080 let alone a 1060/960 and at better than moderate settings, which we will demonstrate the 1050 family provides great frame rates at lower power than its predecessor. It's a win-win for all.

As a reviewer I am in a position to get to try almost every new release of graphics cards, including high end models. However vendors tend to focus on sampling us cheaper, more mass-market products to smaller publications such as ours and we get less time or access to higher end products compared to our competition.

I had a GTX 960 in my main rig for a long time and in the past other mid end cards in the AGP and PCI-E era so I know first-hand what it is like to live with these more affordable cards compared to other reviewers who have a bookshelf filled with a hundred high-end GPUs which are used to fill every PC they build/test and as a result could become jaded with high end performance.

With the results we achieved on 1050, I can truly say that if I only had or could afford 1050, I would be happy with it as it is able to run the latest games at high details in Full HD at good frame rates. The stigma that cheaper cards are crap is no longer true – having gone down the stack now, as more and more affordable GPUs have enough horsepower, e.g. the 1050/950 are around the 2 TeraFLOP mark to comfortably run a variety of games. 1050 is five times cheaper than a 1080 !

Not every gamer needs ultra details and in fact, many modern games now offer a "normal" quality preset instead of medium, i.e. to offer the gamer a baseline level of quality as the developer intended, especially with games being cross platform and no quality settings on the consoles.

Gone are the days of low-quality textures which look like someone's blurred watercolour painting.

2018-09-21 | NVIDIA QUADRO RTX 6000 In action - Photoshop, Porsche RTX, Kubernetes, CLARA and Metropolis


2018-09-20 | NVIDIA RTX Live Demo - Ray Traced Porsche on Turing GPU


2018-09-21 | EPSON goes bright with laser projection and 4K


2018-09-15 | 8 NVIDIA TESLA V100 VOLTA GPU server from HP


2017-12-31 | Future of Networking with Extreme Networks - Eric Broockman CTO Interview


2018-02-16 | NVIDIA’S VOLTA is real, it works and it is finally here.


2018-02-07 | motorola harbourside chat and interview | moto x4, g5s plus, 360 camera & gamepad


2018-02-07 | Inwin X-Frame product tour and interview


2018-02-07 | ASUS Zenbook 3 Deluxe UX490 Ultrabook


2017-11-20 | VICHYPER - Australian Hyperloop Interview and Tour


2017-11-17 | Eugene Kaspersky & Kaspersky Lab Press Conference Sydney 2017


2017-11-17 | Eugene Kaspersky Keynote Sydney 2017


2017-05-21 | AMD RYZEN - Australian launch and Q&A Session | BIOS Update Detailed


2016-11-21 | Motorola Mobility VP Engineering Interview | Moto Z and Moto Mods Developer Kit for Makers & Modders


2016-11-30 | EPSON Tech Interview | 2016 Business and Professional Projectors


2016-11-30 | EPSON Tech Interview | 2016 Home Theatre Projectors 6000, 8000 & 9000 Series


2016-11-22 | EPSON HDR Home Theatre Projector Demo | EPSON TW9300W


2016-11-21 | HDR video Demo - AMD Radeon 'Polaris' RX480 with LG OLED TV


2016-11-30 | Intel Game Chamber 2016 Tour and Interviews | VR, Games, PC Mods, Overclocking and FUN


2016-11-30 | Intel Core i7-6950X Broadwell-E @ 5.62 GHz Live Overclock | Intel Game Chamber 2016


2016-08-29 | LG puts OLED in all the things - Integrate/CEDIA AUS 2016 Booth Tour


2016-08-12 | What is Software Defined Networking with Doug Murray, CEO Big Switch Networks.


2016-06-17 | NVIDIA DGX-1 launches in Australia - NVIDIA ANZ Interviewed


2016-05-01 | Build a kickass Dolby ATMOS Home Theatre - The Pros show us how


2016-04-01 | The Panasonic Toughbook CF-20 Story


2016-03-23 | Seagate 8TB Family, 10TB Helium & Mobile HDD 2016 Hard Disk Update


2016-03-21 | Panasonic Toughbook 20 : Fully Rugged detachable Laptop launch - Water, Drop & Weight Tested


2016-03-23 | ASUS ROG Gaming House Tour - Sydney, Australia


2016-03-01 | ASUS ROG GX700 Liquid Cooled Notebook Preview & Interview


2016-03-23 | League of Legends Legacy eSports Team Interview


2015-12-09 | Microsoft Store SYDNEY - Grand Opening Press Conference


2015-11-11 | HP 6th Gen Core Intel Skylake PC & Jet Intelligence Printing Launch - Melbourne Experience Centre


2015-11-11 | HP Experience Centre Melbourne Tour -Part 2


2015-11-11 | HP Experience Centre Melbourne Tour -Part 1


2015-08-28 | Parrot Interviewed - Flower Power Wireless Plant Monitor


2015-08-28 | Parrot Interviewed - ZiK 2.0 Headphones


2015-08-28 | Parrot Interviewed - AR. Drone, MiniDrones, Bebop Drone


2015-08-23 | MOTO G 3rd Gen IPX7 Water Proofing Demo & Moto X Style/Play/G Q&A


2015-08-21 | Motorola Mobility Interviewed - 3rd Gen Moto G, Moto X Play, Moto X Style


2015-08-20 | NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 950 Launch Ep.1 | Gamestream Co-Op - A New way to share games


2015-08-20 | NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 950 Launch Ep.2 | MOBA/DOTA 2 Latency and Smoothness


2015-08-08 | Intel SKYLAKE i5-6600K LN2 overclock at 6.33 GHz with ASUS Z170 ROG Hero


2015-08-07 | Intel Skylake i7-6700K @ 4.8 GHz & DDR4 @ 3.5GHz on ASUS Z170 Deluxe Overclocking Guide


2015-08-05 | ASUS Z170 Deluxe Motherboard for Intel Skylake 6th Gen Core CPU Overview


2015-08-05 | Review - ASUS Installation Tool for Intel SKYLAKE 6th Gen Core CPU


2015-08-02 | HP Pavilion and Envy 2015 Consumer Notebook First Look


2015-07-25 | HP Envy Phoenix 2015 Overclockable Gaming Tower First Look


2015-07-22 | Ashes Of The Singularity - DirectX 12 Hands-On Demo with AMD FURY X


2015-07-14 | Media Q&A with AMD and Richard Huddy - AMD Fury X ‘Fiji’ Graphics comes to Australia


2015-07-14 | MSI Interview - AMD Radeon R9 300 Gaming, Armour and Lightning GPUs