Introduction
Looking to assemble a gaming setup on the smallest possible budget? The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2gb mobile video card is the least expensive graphics card of the Pascal generation and can run some of the most well-liked eSports games, such as Overwatch, CounterStrike: Global Offensive, and Fortnite, in Full HD.
However, if you’re ready to lower your settings a little bit. This GPU can play the newest games at Full HD, exactly like the AMD Radeon RX 460 that it competes with. It can even run games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Civilization VI with a little modification.
But first and foremost, this GPU works best in ultra-cheap PCs or replaces an older GPU without an external power port. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2gb mobile video card is also found in affordable gaming laptops like the Dell G3 15 and excellent all-around laptops like the Dell XPS 15. Thanks to its low power consumption.
The model under examination is EVGA’s interpretation, which costs about £110 at retail. This price is essentially the standard for the GTX 1050 and is a good indicator of the 1050 2gb market. Although the RX 460, its closest rival, will be compared in this review. The two products fall into slightly distinct categories.
Features of Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2gb mobile video card
Details and Design
The GTX 1050 2gb uses Nvidia’s incredibly effective Pascal architecture, also found in the GTX 1080, 1080 Ti, 1060, and 1070. There wouldn’t be any contest if this conflict were decided based on power effectiveness. There is, however, more to it. This is the smallest Pascal chip available, with only 640 CUDA cores. This model’s high peak clock frequency of 1,455MHz makes up for the lack of cores. Additionally, it has 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. The card from EVGA boasts a short design, measuring only 145mm in length. This means that it will fit into even the smallest gaming rigs, albeit because it is dual-height. You must account for clearance below the PCI-E slot on your motherboard.
Consumption of electricity
The biggest problem is power usage. The GTX 1050 2gb uses all of its power from the motherboard. Thanks to its meager 75W TDP (thermal design power). During the Hitman benchmark, the complete system used just 150W on boards of our high-end, overclocked PC, which is 61W less than the RX 460.
The GTX 1050 Ti, which costs roughly £140 and offers significantly better performance for AAA titles, also has a 75W TDP.
Performance
The two developing technologies that current-gen cards are designed for are proving challenging to test at these early stages. As discussed in our other recent card reviews. As a result, testing cards are now in flux.
There aren’t many examples of it in the real world. Even said, DX12 will become the de facto graphics API. This card was built to survive at least a few years. Ashes of the Singularity, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Hitman (the 2016 version), and other most recent DX12-compatible games, together with Time Spy from Futuremark’s 3DMark DX12 benchmark, were used to test the GTX 1050 2gb.
Since DirectX 11 will likely continue to be widely used for at minimum another year and much longer, we also evaluated a tonne of games using that API.
The support for virtual reality (VR), or lack thereof, is the opposite perspective. VR is really popular right now, but the GTX 1050 isn’t powerful enough to get approved by Oculus and HTC, so you won’t be able to immerse yourself in virtual worlds with it (or any other GPU at its price point) anytime soon.
3DMark Fire Strike
Futuremark’s 2013 release of 3DMark, notably its Fire Strike subtest, served as the foundation for our initial testing. A synthetic test called Fire Strike was created to gauge overall game performance.
The GeForce GTX 1050 easily defeated the Radeon RX 460 in this initial test. Its score of 6,105 easily outperformed Radeon’s score of 4,824, giving the impression that this might be an unfair matchup. It’s also intriguing to note that the Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti we tested outperformed 1050 by a little over 10%, which is approximately what we anticipated.
Excellent, affordable, and compact
It usually boils down to one card being quicker but more costly, or vice versa, while doing video-card reviews. Consequently, the response is, “It depends on your budget!”. This time around that is not the case.
Because there was a little rivalry between the MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2gb OC and its nearest rival, the Radeon RX 460, in this test. It was simple to draw this conclusion.
If the PowerColor RX 460 card is representative of its kind, the MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2gb OC is a clear victor at the delicate around-$100 pricing range. It’s impressive that we observed this performance level in a card with an MSI-claimed $109 MSRP. It’s the quickest card at this price by a wide margin.
In our DirectX 12 test, AMD deserves credit for catching up on some ground it lost under DX11. But the Nvidia GTX 1050 2gb card was still quicker in every scenario, even with the Radeon RX 460s’ $10 price reduction to $99. The GTX 1050 is the better buy at the current price point in the contest between the two graphics cards.
Last thoughts
Doubling the cost of your video card is typically not an option when money is tight. Along with many esports titles, a significant library of excellent PC games and affordable indie games will run at their highest quality on the 1050 2gb. To increase the card’s overclocking headroom. A custom-designed PCB with an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector is included.
Along with the more potent GTX 1050 Ti, which starts at $139, NVIDIA introduced the new GeForce GTX 1050 at $109. The GP107, NVIDIA’s smallest GPU based on the “Pascal” architecture, serves as the foundation for this card. Despite having more clock speeds than the GTX 1050 Ti, it has fewer CUDA cores.The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2gb mobile video card can be an excellent and even great graphics card if your expectations are reasonable. But don’t be shocked if you are yearning for a faster card shortly.
