Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini 2GB Review

For the original German review, see here.

The Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini is a rather nondescript-looking black graphic card which stands out primarily because it is so compact. The circuit board measures only 14.5 x 11.1 cm (5.7 x 4.4 inches) and doesn't require an additional PCI Express power supply. For this reason, the GPU is especially well-suited for situations where the space is limited and power is restricted. Because of the heatsink, the card takes up two slots. The heatsink is made from aluminum and dissipates the heat from the core via fins arranged in a star-shaped pattern. A single 90 mm axial fan aids in the cooling process. Video-outs are standard fare: Dual-Link DVI, HDMI 2.0b (HDCP 2.2) and DisplayPort 1.4. All ports can be used simultaneously, so the card supports a 3-monitor setup.

Aside from the obligatory drivers, Zotac only includes the over-clocking software "Firestorm", which allows the user to monitor the current power consumption, clock speeds, and the temperature. In addition, the user can adjust the fan behavior and create OC profiles.

According to the results of the synthetic benchmark tests, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini sits right inbetween the direct predecessor GTX 950 and the slightly more powerful GTX 1050 Ti. While the GTX 1050 Ti managed a performance plus of 14 %, the GTX 950 is roughly 12 % slower. The AMD competition in form of the Radeon RX 460 trails by about 20 %. The higher-end Radeon RX 470 is significantly faster (+ 61 %). The GeForce GTX 1060 is about twice as fast.

The more powerful GPU sibling GTX 1050 Ti offers about 23 % faster speeds than the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini. For some titles, the difference is much more substantial. The Ti-model outperforms the review GPU by a solid 73 % when playing Hitman 2016. Same is true for Battlefield 1 (+ 60 %), Doom (+ 48 %) and GTA 5 (+ 42 %). The explanation lies in the RAM, since the GeForce Ti features 4 GB, so exactly double the amount. The GeForce GTX 950 trails by 23 %. The performance gap between the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini and the Radeon RX 460 shrinks from 20 % when running synthetic benchmark tests to 12 % when actually playing. A surprise: when running Battlefield 1 (+ 19 %) and Hitman 2016 (+ 57 %), the RX 460 outperforms the GTX 1050.

The Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini is able to handle most games at Full-HD resolution even at maximum details. Very demanding games require the settings to be adjusted slightly to permit fluid game play (50 FPS). Only a very few, particularly power-hungry games (Mafia 3, Hitman 2016 etc.) require a drastic reduction in the details. The GTX 1050 is generally not powerful enough to handle 4K gaming. Quite frequently, the textures suffer a little as well because the card runs out of RAM.

Just like other Pascal GPUs, the GTX 1050 can perform its calculations using OpenCL, DirectCompute or CUDA. The GTX 1050 Ti takes full advantage of its potential and ends up with a Compute Performance plus of 14 %. The Radeon RX 460 is about 10 % slower on average. The RX 460 only manages to surpass the competitors when running the ComputeMark Mandel Scalar and Vector tests. The GeForce GTX 1060 and the Radeon RX 470 remain untouchable, as they offer a performance plus of about 80 %.  

The Zotac GPU doesn't get very noisy during idle scenarios, although the fan keeps spinning at all times. Our review unit, which we purchased from Amazon, unfortunately rattles slightly. Under load, said rattling gets noisier, but is still acceptable at 40.6 dB (measured at a distance of 15 cm / 5.9 inches from the open chassis). The noise floor never gets annoying, but office users are better off purchasing a GPU which remains silent when no 3D loads are present.

According to FurMark, the GTX 1050 reaches a maximum of 56°C and stabilizes at around 54°C during the stress test. This result is much better than that of the MSI GTX 1050 Ti (72°C) and indicates that the cooling is very adequate. Throttling was never an issue; the frame rate remained constant even when running The Witcher 3. The result of the 3DMark Time Spy Stress Test was also very good with minimal variances (99.6%).

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 is the least expensive graphics card in the Pascal lineup. Although the performance is a little more limited, the GPU mirrors most technical aspects of the larger siblings. Most current games are playable at Full-HD with high details. Very demanding titles might require the user to use medium details to ensure fluent gameplay. The 2 GByte of RAM prove to be the bottleneck in many cases. Ambitious gamers are better served with the Ti version, as it comes with 4 GByte of RAM. Because the graphics card is a good compromise between performance and power draw and because of its modern video-decoding capabilities, the GeForce GTX 1050 is particularly well suited for frugal multimedia systems.

The main advantage of the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini is its size. The lower power consumption is a major positive as well. The performance is good enough for occasional gaming and the card is well-suited for small systems. The fan is always active, so the GPU doesn't work well in an office environment.

At the time of writing, Amazon Germany sells the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini for about 125 Euro (~$132). For ambitious gaming, we recommend the Ti model for just 25 Euro (~$26.50) more.