Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Unveiled To Challenge AMD With A $110 Price

Nvidia is adding two new gaming GPUs to its lineup of NVIDIA-Pascal based GPUs — the GeForce GTX 1050, starting at $109, and the GTXD 1050 Ti, starting at $139. That $30 difference is important: the Ti version has 4GB of DDR5, while the 1050 has half that. The 1050 Ti also has 768 CUDA cores, while the 1050 has 640.

That puts the similarly priced Radeon RX 460 dead in the GTX 1050’s sights, but the rivals took two very different approaches to their affordable cards. While the $110 and $140 versions of the Radeon cards differ only in memory capacity-the former offers 2GB, while the latter packs 4GB-the two GTX 1050s offer different performance levels as well.

The 2GB GTX 1050 packs 640 CUDA cores clocked at 1,354MHz, and can boost up to 1,455MHz to increase performance. The 4GB GTX 1050 Ti, on the other hand, contains 768 CUDA cores clocked at 1,290MHz to 1,392MHz. (For comparison, the $200 3GB GTX 1060 holds 1,152 CUDA cores at up to 1,708MHz.)

	GTX 1060 3GB	GTX 1050 Ti	GTX 1050	GTX 750 Ti
CUDA Cores	1152	768	640	640
Texture Units	72	48	40	40
ROPs	48	32	32	16
Core Clock	1506MHz	1290MHz	1354MHz	1020MHz
Boost Clock	1709MHz	1392MHz	1455MHz	1085MHz
Memory Clock	8Gbps GDDR5	7Gbps GDDR5	7Gbps GDDR5	5.4Gbps GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
VRAM	3GB	4GB	2GB	2GB
FP64	1/32	1/32	1/32	1/32
TDP	120W	75W	75W	60W
GPU	GP106	GP107	GP107	GM107
Transistor Count	4.4B	3.3B	3.3B	1.87B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 16nm	Samsung 14nm	Samsung 14nm	TSMC 28nm
Launch Price	$199	$139	$109	$149

Both are built around a new "GP107" graphics processor that offers all the same features as Nvidia’s other Pascal-based GTX 10-series cards - Ansel super screenshots, Fast Sync, simultaneous multi-projection, performance-boosting multi-resolution shading, and more.

Both new Nvidia cards are designed to let you play your favorite games at 1080p and 60fps with good quality settings.

They are built on the Pascal architecture and they are sipping a paltry 75 watts of power.

Out of the box the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti are both fast, with the GTX 1050 Ti on average 40% faster and more than 128% more power efficient than the AMD RX460 at stock speeds, according to Nvidia.

Upgrading to the GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti is easy, as neither need an external power connector.

As for VR, it’s uncertain whether the GTX 1050 series will be compatible with the Oculus Rift’s newly lenient PC requirements.

GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti custom boards will be available from NVIDIA GeForce Partners, including ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, iGame, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac. GTX 1050 Ti will be available on October 25, while the GTX 1050 will be available on or before November 8.