MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4G Review

Similar to the faster GeForce GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 chips, the GTX 1050 Ti is based on the modern Pascal generation from Nvidia. It is an evolution of Maxwell and focuses on efficiency. The most important new features are improved video outputs, which are now up to date and ready for high resolution screens with HDR thanks to DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b. More details about architectural improvements like SMP and GeForce Boost 3.0 are available in our dedicated article about Nvidia's Pascal architecture.

Our test system for the following benchmarks consists of these components:

Intel Core i7-4790K (not overclocked), 16 GB DDR3, Asus ZU97-Deluxe, Asus PB287Q 4K Monitor, Samsung SSD 840 Pro (256 GB, System), OCZ Trion 150 SSD (960 GB, Benchmarks), Windows 10 64-bit with all updates as of mid October. The driver was a beta driver for the 1050, which was distributed for the press ahead of the launch.

The GTX 1050 Ti is pretty much on par with the old GTX 960 (desktop) and the GTX 970M (laptop) in the synthetic Futuremark and Unigine benchmarks. The Radeon RX 460 is clearly beaten, but the RX 470 is much faster. The closest GPU from AMD in terms of performance is the old Radeon R9 380.

The gaming benchmarks show a slight advantage for the GTX 1050 over the old GTX 960 / GTX 970M, but the performance is still very similar. Compared to the modern Polaris GPUs from AMD, the MSI 1050 Ti sits right between the RX 460 and RX 470 and roughly on par with the old R9 280X / 380.

Modern and demanding games like No Man's Sky, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Assassin's Creed Syndicate or Anno 2205 can therefore only be played smoothly at Full-HD and High details. The poorly optimized Mafia 3 is limited to Medium details and 1366 x 768 pixels to ensure smooth gameplay. Simpler titles like Battlefield 1, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Doom or Overwatch can also be played smoothly in the highest settings at 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Throttling was no problem for the MSI card. The results were stable (99.6 %) after 20 3DMark Time Spy (Stress Test) runs. The clocks are steady at 1280 MHz in FurMark, and the GPU reached 56 °C and 43 % of the possible fan speed. The clocks were also steady at around 1660 MHz during Witcher 3 with 57 °C for the GPU and 43 % fan speed. The power (Pwr) was the reason for the performance cap (PerfCap) in both tests according to GPU-Z (more than 90 % of the TDP).

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti has 6 Compute Units, which are clocked at 1455 MHz (in the case of the MSI card) according to LuxMark. The support OpenCL, DirectCompute or CUDA. The MSI 1050 Ti is once again on par with the GeForce GTX 960 (Desktop) and between the RX 460 and RX 470. RX 470 and GTX 1060 are much faster (+ 56/57 % on average).

We tested the graphics card for a couple of days but we did not encounter any stability issues or problems during the benchmarks. Only the slightly clattery fan (see section System Noise) affected the good impression a bit.

The video engine should be identical to the bigger Pascal models and therefore be able to de-/encode 4K without significant CPU load. The DVXA Checker did show the same result of supported codecs for the MSI compared to the GTX 1080 Founders Edition and a HEVC 4K Main10 Playback Benchmark ran at 198 FPS and 3 % CPU load.

Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 1050 Ti sits right between the Radeon RX 460 and RX 470 in our benchmarks. The difference to the GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM is pretty big, while the smaller 3 GB model should be closer to the 1050 Ti due to the memory restrictions. This means the 1050 Ti can handle modern titles 1080p and High up to Ultra details.

The retail price of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is also between the RX 460 and RX 470 at $139 without taxes.

Our inexpensive test model MSI GeForce GT 1050 Ti is also suited for small ITX cases thanks to the short PCB. Except for the occasional fan clattering, the card convinces with a pretty quiet fan noise and low consumption figures. Build quality and design are okay for the price range, so we can recommend the card in this segment.