The Graphics card market has been seeing ups and downs since the dawn of 2017 when the prices of cryptocurrencies started rising abnormally, and people started investing on the cryptocurrency, and as a result, mining became profitable. People began the Graphics card mining, and due to the shortage, their prices increased enormously, and there was a time when the flagship GPUs were relating at a price that was two times their launch price.
The costs of the graphics card are now almost identical to their launch prices but there is a whole community that cannot afford the flagship or the mid-range Graphics cards, according to steam survey more than 80% of PC gamers still play at 1080p and most low-end Graphics cards can fairly play games at 1080p.
That is why today we are going to compare the low-end 1050 SKU from Nvidia; the lineup has three graphics cards in the market namely GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4GB), GTX 1050 (3GB) and GTX 1050 (2GB). We have reviewed all of these Graphics cards separately; you may want to read the full review so that you can get acquainted with the pros & cons of the graphics card you may want to buy. So, without further wait let’s see which of these cards is the best for you.
The architecture, specifications and brief introduction of each graphics card will be provided first to make the reader aware of what they are seeing, and then we will test the Graphics card with some new and old titles.
GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB)
Starting with the base model of the 1050 lineup GTX 1050 the cheapest Graphics card from Nvidia at the time of release, and it marked the debut of the GP 107 GPU that was made with Samsung’s 14nm FinFET lithography process under Pascal architecture. The GPU has a total of six streaming multiprocessor clusters (SM) one of them is disabled making it slightly inferior to the GTX 1050Ti, with each of the SM has eight texture units and 128 CUDA cores. Like the flagship Pascal devices had their advantages over the Maxwell devices the GTX 1050 is no exception, its direct predecessor the GTX 950 required more power and price with less performance.
Its basic specifications include 2GB of GDDR5 memory that has a memory speed of 7Gbps and 112-bit memory interface which ultimately made the total memory bandwidth of 112GB/s. Since it has only 5 SMs, the texture units turn out to be 40 making the texture filtering rate 54.2 GT/s, while the rendering output units remain the same, i.e., 32. The PCB includes 640 CUDA cores with a Base clock speed of 1354 MHz and the boost clock speed of 1455 MHz, and the whole Graphics card does not require power from the wall as the required 75 Watt TDP can be obtained from the motherboard. It is available at a price of around $140 that is slightly higher than its MSRP.
GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4GB)
The high-end Graphics card of the low-end 1050 lineup the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti, the Graphics card that offered the best price to performance ratio. It uses the same architecture and GPU as the GTX 1050 but here the GP 107 works at its full potential. All of the six streaming multiprocessors (SMs) are enabled in this Graphics card with each of them having 128 CUDA cores, eight texture units and a separate polymorph engine for each cluster. The L2 cache that each of the streaming multiprocessors has is 1024 KB which means all SMs can process 6 MB of data at a time which will depend on the clock speed of the cores respectively.
Since it is the best low-range Graphics card that can play almost every game at 1080p from Nvidia, it had the best specs in the league of 1050s. All of the six SMs are active which means the CUDA core count is 768 with a base clock speed of 1290 MHz and boost clock speed of 1392 MHz and the texture unit count is 48 making the texture filtering rate 61.9 GT/s. The GTX 1050Ti is not only best regarding the architecture it has a more significant memory too although the memory configuration is the same. The 4GB stack has s memory speed of 7Gbps and 112-bit memory interface which makes the total memory bandwidth of 112GB/s. Lastly, the power consumption is also the same that is the GTX 1050ti is also rated at 75 Watts.
GeForce GTX 1050 (3GB)
The latest Graphics card in the 1050 lineup that was explicitly released to tackle the crypto mining since it had almost the same specifications of the 1050Ti but less video memory. Regarding architecture the GP 107 GPU used in this graphics card is identical to the one used in the GTX 1050Ti, even the configurations are also same, one can say that both Graphics cards are manufactured simultaneously. All of the six SMs are enabled making it superior to the GTX 1050 while the transistor count remains the same throughout the 1050 lineup, i.e., a total of 3.3 billion transistors, even Nvidia decided to retain the quantity of L2 cache despite having much more options.
The specification of this Graphics card looks like the blend of the GTX 1050 and the GTX 1050Ti. The CUDA core and texture count are same as the 1050Ti, i.e., 768 and 48 respectively making its computing power identical to the 1050Ti while it has the highest clock speeds overall with a base clock speed of 1392 MHz and boost clock speed of 1518 MHz. The only component that differentiates it with other is the memory Nvidia decided to put a secondary memory in this card that is why we are getting an 84-bit GDDR5 memory with 7Gbps speed and a memory bandwidth of only 84GB/s. This Graphics card is also rated at 75 Watts.
Test
We started our test with the most played game in the world Fortnite, all graphics cards were handling the game with ease since it is a low-weight title at 1080p high graphics settings and high 3D resolution 1050 (2GB) got the average framerate of 56 while the other two gained more than 60 the 3GB version got 61FPS and the 1050Ti got 66FPS. Then we tested another Battle Royale game that requires immense Graphics power Player Unknown’s: Battlegrounds neither of our contenders got above 60 frames at 1080p medium settings in this benchmark the GTX 1050Ti came first with average framerates of 59 and the GTX 1050 (2GB) came last with 52FPS.
Then we tested the most demanding texture intensive games the AAA titles, starting with the Battlefield 1 at 1080p medium settings the 2GB version got 49 frames on average, 3GB version got an average framerate of 52, and the 1050Ti got 56 FPS which means neither of them could hit the 60FPS mark.
Then we tested the most selling game of all time the GTA V; the open world game requires the best texture filtering to run at its peak, due to less VRAM and texture units GTX 1050 came last with 54 frames on average while the remaining got reasonably similar results at 1080p high settings. Lastly, we tested the best RPG game ever made the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt another open-world title that requires immense graphical horsepower in this benchmark the 2GB version got 49 frames on average the 3GB version had 48 frames on average while the 1050Ti got an average framerate of 56.
The conclusion here is yours since you know your budget the ratio will vary throughout, although the GTX 1050Ti is recommended if you have extra bucks.