Introduction

The sub-$200 market-segment has been NVIDIA's problem area in terms of price-performance competitiveness with AMD, even though the company has had higher volumes. Most games released for the competitive gaming crowd run great on sub-$300 graphics cards, and it's only blockbuster AAA titles with cutting-edge production designs that prompt people to invest in faster graphics solutions, where NVIDIA has established an unbeatable lead.

NVIDIA is getting hawkish and wants itself a bigger slice of the sub-$200 market segment targeting e-Sports players. The company launched the $139.99 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and $109.99 GTX 1050 earlier this month. The two SKUs are based on NVIDIA's smallest implementation of its "Pascal" GPU architecture, the GP107 silicon. This tiny chip packs up to 768 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory on the GTX 1050 Ti.

These are still "Pascal" CUDA cores that tick at 1.35-1.45 GHz. NVIDIA's decision to go with a 128-bit wide memory bus shows that the GTX 1050 Ti has been built to a cost (with no more than four memory chips), which prepares NVIDIA for a price war with the better-endowed, but costlier to make AMD offerings. NVIDIA managed to get the power consumption of the GTX 1050 Ti below the 75W mark, which makes it capable of sustaining itself on slot power alone. Its nearest rival from AMD, the Radeon RX 470 4 GB, needs an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector to feed its 120W TDP setup.



Palit's GeForce GTX 1050 Ti KalmX is of a rare breed. It comes without any fans, which delivers the perfect noise-free experience, greatly suited for a media PC that can handle gaming, too. The card also doesn't require additional power connector(s), which will help with power supplies of small form factor cases since such units often don't provide additional PCIe power cables. Palit chose not to include any overclocking, which seems reasonable given the passive design, but our overclocking section shows that overclocking is definitely possible with this card. In Europe, the GTX 1050 Ti KalmX is listed for around € 150. Since Palit's products are not available in the US, we converted the price to $160 for our comparison graphs.

Packaging

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver disc and documentation

The Card

Palit's card is dominated by the big passive heatsink. A backplate is not included and not a requirement in this price segment. Dimensions of the card are 18.5 cm x 14.0 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include a DVI port, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort.

Unlike previous-generation NVIDIA cards, the DVI port no longer includes the analog signal, so you'll have to use an active adapter. NVIDIA also updated DisplayPort to be 1.2 certified and 1.3/1.4 ready, which enables support for 4K at 120 Hz and 5K @ 60 Hz, or 8K @ 60 Hz with two cables.

The GPU also comes with an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 2.0b compatible, which supports HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies. The GPU's video-encoding unit has been updated to support HEVC at 10-bit and 12-bit.


The GeForce GTX 1050 Series does not support SLI.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back).

A Closer Look

Palit's thermal solution uses two heatpipes and a large heatsink to handle the heat of the GTX 1050 Ti GPU. A few thermal pads are visible here, too, which cool the voltage regulation circuitry. The memory chips are not cooled.


The GTX 1050 Ti KalmX requires no additional power input; all power is drawn from the PCI-Express bus slot. This power input configuration is specified for up to 75 W.


The uPI uP9509 is the same as on several other custom GTX 1050 Ti designs.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Micron and are marked with "D9TRZ," which decodes to MT51J256M32HF-60S:A. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6,000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GP107 graphics processor is the company's first chip to use a 14 nanometer production process. It is also the company's first graphics processor to be made at Samsung and not TSMC. The GPU has a transistor count of 3.3 billion and a die size of 132 mm².