Review MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2G OC
Nvidia's new budget cards of the season, the GeForce GTX 1050 line, have officially launched, and with its new GP107 graphics processor (GPU) comes a blizzard of new card designs.
Review MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2G OC
Introduction, Design & Performance
Because Nvidia isn't issuing reference designs of the GeForce GTX 1050 (or a GTX 1050 "Founders Edition" card) for the usual video-card makers to follow, gamers will have to choose one of the many customized boards made by Nvidia’s partners. On Oct. 25, Nvidia is launching both the GeForce GTX 1050 and a hopped-up GTX 1050 Ti version (which we’ve already reviewed in Gigabyte trim; see our review of the $169.99-MSRP Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Gaming G1 4G). The MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2G OC we have on the test bench here today is the first GeForce GTX 1050 we’ve been able to benchmark, and unlike the well-overclocked Gigabyte board, it should offer a fair representation of what the card can achieve at close-to-stock settings.
We say “close” because though this card has a fancy cooler and the letters "OC" in its name, it comes overclocked by only a tiny amount (just around 50MHz), which isn’t enough of a bump to make a noticeable difference in games. It also sells for the exact base-model/"starts at" MSRP mentioned by Nvidia for the GTX 1050: $109.99. So it’s almost a reference card, for all intents and purposes, albeit one that's mildly overclocked.
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2G OC (Box and Card)[/caption]This budget MSI card is set to do battle with other GeForce GTX 1050 cards, as well as with AMD’s all-new Radeon RX 460, which just had its base price lowered to $99.99 ($10 less than the base-model GTX 1050, in case you’re bad at math). The Radeon RX 460’s suggested starting price (and, incidentally, that of the Radeon RX 470) was lowered ahead of the GTX 1050 launch as a way to take the wind out of the Nvidia sails (and sales). That move illustrates once again just how cutthroat the GPU market is, and how sharp the rivalry these days between Nvidia and AMD. After all, in this part of the market, with cards under $200, is where the lion's share of video-card sales are made, in terms of volume.
The MSI GTX 1050 card we have here adheres very closely to the specs laid out by Nvidia for the GTX 1050 as a whole, making it a beginner GPU for those running 1080p monitors without a lot of cash to drop on PC hardware. Of course, MSI also has several other tricked-out variants of this particular card, as well as a broadly similar GTX 1050 Ti version, so there is a GPU here to fit pretty much any budget that can handle a card between $100 and $200. Let's dig into this one.
Design & Features
This MSI GTX 1050 GPU is specifically the OC version, so it offers clock speeds that are a wee bit higher than the reference spec. For example, Nvidia lists the base clock for this card as 1,354MHz, but this card’s base is 1,404MHz, a difference of 50MHz. For the Boost Clock, Nvidia lists it as 1,455MHz, while this card is rated at 1,518MHz, a difference of 63MHz.
These are quite small overclocks, and we imagine the GPU will be able to boost even beyond these speeds all by itself, using the built-in GPU Boost 3.0 technology. So the numbers provided by MSI are good to know, but in the end, they are not enormously telling. It should be noted that unlike other high-end cards from MSI that include a feature for "one-click" overclocking (in which you open a software program and just tap an overclock setting), this card does not offer that feature. Instead, you just have to let the card do its thing, which we suspect most buyers in this price range will do. And if you have the desire and knowledge, you can use an add-on program (such as MSI's own free download Afterburner) to overclock it manually.
This MSI card has 2GB of RAM, which is standard for the GeForce GTX 1050 as a whole, and it features a 128-bit memory interface and 640 CUDA cores. On this card, you get a single-fan cooling solution and, unlike the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Gaming G1 we tested, this card does not require additional power via a PCI Express power connector.
Not all GTX 1050 cards will share this trait, but it's one of the GTX 1050's major selling points. Indeed, this is one of the biggest advantages of both the GeForce GTX 1050 and the AMD Radeon RX 460 boards, as they can be plugged into almost any desktop PC, so long as it has a PCI Express slot on the motherboard. It’s the ultimate low-end upgrade for anyone wanting to get into PC gaming on a marginal PC, as it provides great performance at 1080p at an affordable price.
Unlike the dual-slot Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti we tested, this much more compact card has just three outputs: dual-link DVI, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.4...
The card body is 7 inches long, just a bit longer than the PCB itself, with the cooler jutting out a tad...
It takes up two slots side by side because of the heft of its beefy cooler. MSI covers the card with a three-year warranty.
Since this is a basic GPU, there’s not much else to cover here. It doesn’t have fancy lighting or a big software package; it isn’t VR-ready; you can't arrange the card in a dual-card SLI configuration; and it's barely overclocked. It’s close to a stock GTX 1050 without the trimmings, which its price and design reflect.
Performance (Part I)
As we've mentioned in our other recent card reviews, things are in flux these days when it comes to testing cards, because the two emerging technologies that current-gen cards are built for are proving difficult to test in these early days.
The first of these is DirectX 12 (DX12), which is just now coming on the scene. There are very few real-world benchmarks for it. Still, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the future, and this card was designed to last for a few years, if not longer. So it's important to know if a card can handle DX12 well before buying. We tested the GTX 1050 with all the newest DX12-capable games we had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Ashes of the Singularity, as well as Futuremark's 3DMark DX12 benchmark, Time Spy. We tested a load of games using DirectX 11, too, because that API will still be in wide use for at least another year, and probably much longer.
The other angle is virtual reality (VR) support, or lack thereof. VR is all the rage these days, but the GTX 1050 is not powerful enough to earn an acceptable rating by the powers that be at Oculus and HTC, so you won’t be immersing yourself in artificial worlds with this GPU (or any other GPU all that near its price point) anytime soon.
And so, on to the benchmarks. Since this specific MSI GeForce GTX 1050 card costs $109, we'll compare it to the $99-to-$110 Radeon RX 460, and it’ll be quite interesting to see how they match up. (We tested a PowerColor version of the RX 460, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 460, which was selling for $99 at this writing, down from $109 when we reviewed it.) It’s rare that we have two new GPUs from competing companies that have almost exactly the same price. However, because the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti costs just $30 more, in some cases, it will also be interesting to see how this near-vanilla GTX 1050 performs compared to Gigabyte's much amped-up GTX 1050 Ti version.
All of the recent-generation cards we’ve tested in the $100-to-$200 range have also been added to the benchmark charts below, with a few higher-end cards such as the GeForce GTX 1060 and Radeon RX 480 thrown in for good measure. We also dropped in the short-board AMD Radeon R9 Nano, for an idea of what kind of performance you can get in a very compact card if money is no object. (At this writing, it was about four times the price of a typical GTX 1050!)
3DMark Fire Strike
We started off our testing with Futuremark’s 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite's Fire Strike subtest. Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance.
In this initial test, the GeForce GTX 1050 scored an easy win over the Radeon RX 460. Its score of 6,105 simply smushed the Radeon’s score of 4,824, making it appear that this could be a lopsided contest. It’s also interesting that the Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti we tested was a bit more than 10 percent faster than the 1050, which is about what we expected.
Tomb Raider (2013)
Let's start with some older games.
Here, we fired up the 2013 reboot of the classic title Tomb Raider, testing at the Ultimate detail preset and three resolutions.
In our first real-world gaming test, things are not looking good for the Radeon RX 460, comparatively speaking, as it was slower than the GTX 1050 by almost 20 frames per second (fps) at 1080p resolution. At 1440p we also saw a drastic difference in the GTX 1050's favor. That just shows there is a pricing problem, either on AMD or Nvidia’s end. We also saw an 18 percent difference between the GTX 1050 and the Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti at 1080p, which is relatively modest considering the Gigabyte card's MSRP is a full $60 more.
Sleeping Dogs
Next, we rolled out the very demanding real-world gaming benchmark test built into the title Sleeping Dogs…
This is a difficult test for budget GPUs, but the MSI GTX 1050 was able to deliver a major smackdown to the PowerColor Radeon RX 460: at 1080p, 46.9fps versus 28.4fps. The Radeon RX 460 was barely able to reach the 30fps mark, which is the minimum for a decent playing experience, but dialing back some settings on this harsh test would get you there. Meanwhile, the GTX 1050 was close to the glorious mark, pulling down a more-than-sufficient 46.9fps. 60fps would be reachable with a few tweaks.
Bioshock Infinite
The popular title Bioshock Infinite isn’t overly demanding, but it's a popular one with stellar good looks. In its built-in benchmark program, we set the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF)…
This benchmark shows a pretty clear pattern developing, as once again the MSI GTX 1050 was substantially faster than the PowerColor Radeon RX 460, this time to the tune of more than 20fps more at 1080p resolution. Both GPUs delivered extremely playable frame rates, though, so it’s not a case of one card being playable and the other being unplayable on this title. Still, it’s always nice to have a big frame-rate cushion, and with the GTX 1050’s 74fps at 1080p, there’s more than enough performance to keep things humming along at 60fps even if you encounter a sudden frame drop.
Hitman: Absolution
Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still pretty hard on a video card.
Things didn't improve here for the Radeon RX 460, as it was bested in this older benchmark at 1080p by dangerously close to double. This is one of those situations where the RX 460 was largely unplayable, at just 20fps at 1080p resolution, though with that card, in the real world we'd dial back the harsh 8x MSAA setting. The MSI GTX 1050 was able to hack it, though, running at a smooth-enough 35fps. Nice.
Far Cry Primal
Next, we moved to a more recent game, released in 2016. Ubisoft’s latest open-world first-person hunting game is one of the most demanding titles we use, thanks to its lush foliage, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments.
AMD was able to stop the bleeding somewhat in this test, as it was able to reduce the performance delta between the two cards at 1080p to 11fps. That’s still a decisive victory for MSI's GTX 1050 card, however, and it makes sense that the Radeon card would do somewhat better in this title, as AMD has always held an advantage over Nvidia in this first-person hunter-and-gatherer game.
Ashes of the Singularity
Oxide's Ashes of the Singularity is a bit of a departure as a benchmark, as it's a real-time strategy title, rather than a first-person shooter or a third-person action title. Due to the planet-scale nature of its battle scenes, with hundreds of onscreen tanks, ships, and other implements of future warfare, it can be extremely demanding at high settings. And because of the plethora of rendered units, this game is also way more CPU-bound—especially at high settings and resolutions—than most other recent games. We used the Standard preset here, rather than the game's killer Crazy preset.
MSI's GTX 1050 card was able to keep its streak alive in this challenging game, this time outpacing the PowerColor Radeon RX 460 by a substantial 10fps at 1080p resolution. This is another of those games where the game was very playable on the MSI card (at 38fps), but on the RX 460 it was borderline. It’s titles like this that make a clear distinction between these two GPUs, because at least on the settings we are using, the RX 460 is simply not powerful enough.
Grand Theft Auto V
One of the most popular game franchises on the planet, Grand Theft Auto needs no introduction. Version V took a lot longer than many expected to land on the PC. But when it finally did, in early 2015, it brought a number of graphical improvements and tweakable visual settings that pushed the game far beyond its console roots.
Note that some of the cards below have no bars because they would not run GTA V at our test settings. That's a quirk of this game: It will automatically bounce down settings if the game perceives it will not run acceptably at a given mix of resolution and detail settings.
We were impressed to see this formerly “tough on GPUs” game run at over 60fps at 1080p on the MSI GTX 1050, which is simply awesome. The GTX 1050 Ti also ran quite well too, hitting 73.8fps at 1080p. Sadly, we could not get the PowerColor Radeon RX 460 to run this game at the test settings we use, so there are no numbers for it in this round. That said, its next-biggest brother, the Radeon RX 470, put the hurt on the MSI GTX 1050 with an impressive 85fps performance. Still, that RX 470 card cost at least $60 more at this writing.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Lara Croft rises once again in the early 2016 iteration of Square Enix's long-running action franchise. As our hero works to unfold an ancient mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) ahead of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather system, and the complexities of Lara's wind-tousled hair, add to the game's visual complexity.
We used lower settings (the Medium preset) for this test since these are entry-level GPUs, and at that preset we saw the MSI GTX 1050 deliver a respectable 54.5fps at 1080p, if not quite the promised "60fps on high settings" that is this card’s tagline. The Radeon RX 460 card was, not surprisingly, a bit farther away from this lofty goal, and it was able to achieve only 42.9fps. That’s still quite playable, of course, but once again, this is a pretty large deficit considering the close pricing.
Hitman (2016)
The newest game in the Hitman franchise finds Agent 47 turning over a new leaf, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery as a teacher at a school for underprivileged children. Just kidding, of course; he kills loads of people in this one, just like the rest. It does offer gorgeous graphics in both DX11 and DX12 varieties, though. We'll tackle the former (DX11) first.
This is another AMD-friendly title that gave the MSI GeForce GTX 1050 its narrowest victory yet, with the MSI GTX 1050 card just edging over the 60fps line by a small margin. The Radeon RX 460 was close behind, at a smooth 59fps
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