Overall and Final Verdict
Now that we have taken a closer look at the card as well as its performance across a variety of situations lets recap. When we compare the GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X to the other MSI GTX 1050 Ti that I took a look at earlier this week. The Gaming X addresses both of the issues I had with the smaller card. The two large fans don’t have the same fan noise, in fact, they almost never even come on. The fans don’t even turn on right away in game a lot of the time. That’s because the cooling performance with the large cooler is night and day compared to the smaller ITX form factor card. With that MSI was able to crank up the overclock as well. The recommended clock speed for the GTX 1050 Ti from Nvidia was 1290 MHz and the smaller Ti from MSI that I tested was overclocked up to 1342 Mhz. That in itself wasn’t too bad, but the Gaming X ships with a clock speed of 1468 MHz and can be turned up to 1493 MHz with their app. The red and black cooler on the Gaming X isn’t going to fit every build like the other card, but it does look good. On top of all of that, the card also has a very low power draw.
The downside of course to the new upgraded cooler is that it means the card has to be much larger. I’m not upset about the length of the card, but I do wish they would be careful adding extra height, especially with a card that’s price point might be more likely to be used in cases that don’t have as much room.
So the MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X overall is a good card, better in just about every way than MSI’s other GXT 1050 Ti. How does it do when we consider the price though? That is where things get a little tricky. Even at $139 for the smaller 1050 Ti I didn’t really consider it to be the value card that the GTX 1050 was. So with the Gaming X selling for $164.99 currently it is up into dangerous territory. The RX 470 with the price drop has a few cards that aren’t far away in price. Even MS’s Gaming X RX 470 4GB is selling for $185 after rebate and a few other cards are within $5 or $10 of this card. The performance gap between the RX 470 and the GTX 1050 Ti, even with a big overclock, is huge. So hopefully the pricing for the 1050 Ti Gaming X drops down because currently, it isn’t a good buy. It’s a bummer because it’s a great card, but prices dictate everything and a $30 jump in this price range puts us up into a completely different class of cards.
Live Pricing: HERE
