In the world of video cards the market is moving at a breakneck pace. Levels of performance that were once reserved for flagship models are now easily accessible for more budget restricted buyers. Take NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1070. Even at half the price of what a GTX 980 used to demand, it offers consumers incredible amounts of pixel pushing performance. With that being said in the entry-level or ‘budget’ end of the marketplace NVIDIA has lagged behind AMD. So much so that the last generation’s GeForce GTX 950 was rather lackluster and without a ‘950Ti’ many people opted for an AMD option instead of stepping up to the GTX 960 price point – and it was a rather steep step to say the least! This generation however seems to be different and one prime example of what you can get for about $180 is the MSI GeForce GTX 1050Ti Gaming X 4GB.
We are always on the lookout for great value cards and when we first heard about this card from MSI we were rather intrigued to say the least. After all for a mere $30 more than what a stock or ‘reference’ GTX 1050Ti buyers can get a card with a great cooling TwinX VI cooling system and a factory overclock on the GDDR5 RAM as well as graphics processor sides of the equation. To be precise instead of 1290/1392 and 7GHz RAM, the MSI’s Gaming X 1050Ti clocks in at an impressive 1379MHz with a boost of 1493Mhz and the RAM set to 7.1GHz. That translates to a 6.9% overclock on the processor and 1.4% on the RAM side of the equation which is sure to do nothing but boost performance well above stock performance levels. To further make justifying the couple extra dollars MSI has included a 6-pin power connector which doubles the amount of power overclocking enthusiasts can have access to. This alone makes the Gaming X 1050Ti 4GB one heck of an interesting card to say the least.
Equally impressive, and just like all GTX 1050Ti cards, the MSI GeForce GTX 1050Ti Gaming X 4GB comes with a – you guessed it – four Gigabytes of onboard GDDR5 RAM instead of the mediocre 2GB that the previous generation’s ‘filler card’ (the GTX 960 2GB) had to offer. In other words, this card sounds tailor made for a wide range of consumers. That is how this review was born as this is not a review sample sent by MSI, instead it is a card we purchased just to show what it can do. As such we will not only be showing you what it has to offer versus a stock GTX 1050Ti but also what it can do against a used GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB not the hobbled 3GB version) as well as a reference GeForce GTX 1050. This way you can see if NVIDIA really has stepped up their game in the entry level market or if it still makes more sense to move up to the 1060 price point… or even start thinking about AMD offers. We hope you enjoy the review.
