So earlier this week I took a look at both the GTX 1050 and the GTX 1050 Ti. Both of our samples were from Nvidia and MSI but around the same time I also ended up with a second MSI GTX 1050 Ti, the Gaming X model. It didn’t seem right to just slip the numbers into the other coverage so today I’m going to take a look at the card. It is longer than the other MSI cards and it has a full sized dual fan cooler. They also slipped a 6-pin power connection on it as well so today I’m going to run it through all of our normal tests and see how well it performs.

Product Name: MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4G

Review Sample Provided by: MSI

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Amazon Link: HERE

I also make sure to include a copy of the GPUz for each card tested. This way we can confirm the clock speeds are in line with the specifications. In this case, we can see the card ships with the Gaming Mode as the default and you can use the Gaming App to turn on silent or overclock modes.  It also lets you guys/girls know what driver I tested on and the firmware revision as well.

Packaging

Before getting into all of the testing I did want to check out how you would find the card at the store and also peek inside the box. Unlike the other two cards, the Gaming X’s box is done up in the typically red and black that all of MSIs gaming branded cards have. Unlike a lot of other manufacturers, MSI actually puts their card right on the front of the box. For me, this is an important thing because when shopping in someplace like a Frys or Microcenter it is nice to be able to see what you are actually buying, not just a rendering of something unrelated to video cards altogether. The red and black card has a red background. Then down in the bottom right corner is the normal Nvidia wrap around info plate. They did slip in an MSI logo as well as the Gaming Series logo in the top left corner. Then in the bottom left we have the Gaming X branding, a Twin Frozr logo to show what cooler it has (if the photo wasn’t enough), and a block with the vRAM, DirectX support, and the PCI requirement.

On the back we have more going on than the basic cards as well. Here they have broken down three key features, namely the custom LED lighting, the low noise features of the cooler, and the included Gaming App that lets you ramp up clock speeds with one click. Each has a photo to help with the descriptions as well. Then below that is a basic feature list, minimum specifications, and a basic specification listing as well.

Inside the box, everything comes in a black tray. The card is wrapped up in a static protective bag then sits in a cutout foam tray to keep it safe. There is a layer of foam above that, then on top is a thin box for the documentation and accessories. Normally everything is just tossed in, so it was a little weird to see all of the documentation in a nice envelope with the MSI logo on it. Our sample only came with the Quick Users Guide but I would bet the cards will normally come with a driver/software disc as well.

Card Layout and Photos

So right off the bat, this card is completely different than the one that I tested earlier this week. The cards from the launch are shorter ITX form factor cards and they have a basic cooler design. The 1050 Ti Gaming X, on the other hand, uses the same cooler design that MSI used on the higher end cards like the 1060, 1070, and the RX 480/470 as well. It has two large fans and large plastic fan shroud in black and red. The shroud has groves cut in the front and then on the back those same grooves have a transparent red plastic in them that is lit up for a little extra style.

To fit the larger fans the PCB and the overall cooler is taller than a normal PCI device, so keep that in mind if you are trying to fit this card into a smaller case or an older case. It wasn’t long ago when the side panel was just above the video cards but a lot of companies have gone wider on their cases for better heatsink compatibility.

The cooler design has a proper sheet metal blade design for good surface area and it runs the length of the card. MSI used two thick heatpipes, one going out the back and towards the PCI slot cover end of the card and the other goes out the top and pulls heat out to the other end of the card. The two large fans blow air down over the heatsink and up against the PCB. The air then vents out all of the open sides on the case. The heatsink isn’t very thick and leaves a big gap under it, this is normally an indication of the company using a universal heatsink design across a lot of their cards, the gap allows soom for any caps. Given the low TDP of the GTX 1050 Ti, this shouldn’t be an issue. The fan shroud does have a little room up on the top edge where they slipped in an MSI logo and the gamer series dragon. Both are also backlit with full RGB LEDs as well so you can pick the color to match your build if needed.

Unlike the basic GTX 1050 TI I tested, the Gaming X also adds a 6 pin power connection. I’m not sure that there is any need for it at all, but it will be interesting to see if the extra power allows for extra performance or overclocking.

For the PCI slot, MSI dropped the logo that was cut into the other two cards and went with a vent that takes up a full slot. We still get the same DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort options that the other 1050 Ti had so you should have one that will work with your monitor.

In addition to the large cooler, the Gaming X does have a full sized PCB that covers the extra length and height of this specific card. This was mostly to get the power connection down on the end of the card up top, it doesn’t look like much of anything else is run up into that PCB space otherwise.

Our Test Rig and Procedures

Synthetic Benchmarks

To start off the testing on the GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X, I started off with our Synthetic benchmarks. They may not be a perfect representation of the exact FPS you will see in game, but they are consistent and give us a great comparison point between similar cards. Considering I was testing the Gaming X with its 1468 MHz clock speed (in gaming mode) against MSIs also overclocked regular 1050 Ti with a clock speed of 1342 MHz I knew I would need a consistent result to best compare them. So I started with 3DMark using the Fire Strike benchmark for DX11 and Time Spy for DX12. In Fire Strike using the performance setting (1080p), the Gaming X put up a 7989 graphics score compared to the 7618 of the regular Ti. This was enough to jump above the GTYX 960’s and isn’t a bad bump in performance with just more of an overclock. The Time Spy benchmark didn’t show as big of a gap with the different being 101 points.

My second test was Unigine’s Valley Benchmark on its highest setting and this is as close as a synthetic benchmark gets to being an in game result. This is because this is a good test to give an idea of performance of games using the Unigine game engine. That said the Gaming X pulled an average of 40.7 FPS. This was half an FPS higher than the less overclocked 1050 Ti putting it only slightly closer to the RX 470’s that were 5 or more FPS away.

Next, I tested using the Catzilla benchmark both because it’s an awesome one to watch a huge cat destroy half a city with its laser eyes and because it is a good test that can be run at multiple resolutions. I tested the 1050 Gaming X at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k to cover the whole range but I wanted to focus on the 1080p results because that is where this card is designed to run. With an 8711 it did get a nice bump with the extra overclock but the gap between it and the slightly more expensive 470 Gaming X is still very noticeable.

For the last test, I ran SteamVR to take a peek at potential virtual reality performance. The GTX 1050 Ti isn’t exactly designed for VR but I was curious to see how the card would do. The 3.5 score isn’t all that inspiring, but it does fall into the playable range though I wouldn’t expect too much.

In-Game Benchmarks

Now that we have an idea of how the cards stand compared to each other, it’s finally time to get down to the in-game performance numbers. To do that I ran through our entire in-game benchmark test suite. The suite has 13 different games tested at both 1080p and 1440p at their highest settings. Four of the games are also tested in more than one configuration to see the difference between DX11 and DX12 performance or in the case of the most recent addition, DOOM I test out both OpenGL and Vulkan performance. The problem is, with so many results it can be a little too much to take in. To help with that I have condensed our results into two graphs, one for 1080p and the other for 1440p. All of our games are run at their max settings and we use the average FPS as the end result. The graphs below are broken down into three FPS ranges to represent unplayable (below 30), playable but not ideal (30 to 60), and ideal (over 60 FPS). So what did I find from those results?

Well, if we just take into account the range charts below, the GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X doesn’t really show any change from MSI’s other Overclocked GTX 1050 Ti, we get the same results at both resolutions. At 1080p almost everything is in the yellow playable or in the green ideal range with just ultra demanding games like Ashes of the Singularity struggling and that game struggles with just about every single card solution. Even at 1440p, a resolution that the GTX 1050 Ti isn’t designed for we do still end up with 10 results being playable and 7 not playable. Both results are actually really impressive when we keep in mind that the GTX 1050 Ti is designed for 60 FPS in the less demanding e-sports friendly games like Overwatch , Dota 2, and League of Legends. The games I test with are cranked up to their highest settings and are much more demanding.

As always I did also include all of the actual results below as well for all of you who are crazy enough (like me) to dig through them all. So what did I find? Well for starters, I did want to point out that unlike what the FPS range graphs might make you think, there is a difference between the slightly overclocked MSI 1050 Ti and the overclocked 1050 Ti Gaming X that I am testing today. Overall the extra overclock gets you 1 FPS average well .8606 officially. That does, however, include a couple results that did stand out, specifically in Thief the Gaming X came in below the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti. Like I mentioned earlier, in game results aren’t perfectly consistent. Beyond that the Gaming X did stay above the other 1050 Ti as well as the RX 460. The RX 470, on the other hand, was consistently faster as well, by a fairly big margin.

Compute Benchmarks

For my next set of tests, I wanted to take a look at Compute performance. Typically I do this by using Folding at Home and Compubench to test a range of situations but as I ran into with the original GTX 1050 Ti launch I couldn’t get folding to benchmark using the relaunch drivers and that was also when I tested this card as well. So today I only have CompubenchCL results to take a look at. Starting with the Video Composition results we again have MSIs other 1050 Ti performing on par (and actually slightly ahead). This is well above the RX 460 and GTX 1050 that are both in the 73/74 FPS range but WELL below the RX 470 that is up at about 104 FPS. In my second test, I took a look at Bitcoin mining performance and here the Ti’s come in about 50 MHash/s above the GTX 1050 and 100 MHash/s above the RX 460. The RX 470 though is up higher at 548.

Cooling, Noise, and Power

The last set of testing focuses on some of the performance aspects that people forget about when looking for a new video card. For example, I take a look at power usage to get an idea if you will need to run a bigger power supply. I also test the cooler for both cooling performance and noise to see what manufacturer and model is going to best fit your build. The cooling tests specifically are sometimes the only big difference that manufacturers can make to get their card to stand out other than just overclocking. In today's case, it’s a great look at the range of MSI’s cards on the same chipset.

So for power usage testing I monitor the total wattage of the entire testbench using a Kill-a-Watt and document the highest wattage pulled while running through Valley Benchmark. In the case of the GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X, I saw 147 watts. This was 14 watts higher than the less overclocked GTX 1050 Ti from MSI. This shows us that with the addition of the 6-pin power connection MSI has turned up the voltage slightly to handle that higher overclock. The addition of a second fan might also account for a little bit of that as well, but honestly, the fans on the Gaming X don’t even turn on through most of the test but I will get to that here shortly.

For noise testing, I test on our open test bench with our meter just past the motherboard. This leads to higher than normal numbers, well higher than you would ever experience day to day but due to the noise levels in and around our office this setup leads to the most repeatable results. That said the Gaming X with its two large fans came in in the middle of our charts overall and it was a little over one decibel higher than the smaller MSI. This was a surprise because the smaller cards had a noticeable fan noise where this card seemed quieter to the ear. This goes to show you though that decibels are only part of the answer, different tones can be a lot more noticeable than others. Because of this, I wouldn’t label the card as noisy like I did with the others, in fact it seemed quiet compared to most cards I have tested recently.

Okay, the last batch of testing is taking a look at the cards cooling performance by testing peak temperatures while looping through Valley benchmark. I did this test twice, once with the stock fan settings a second time with the fans turned up to 100% fan speed. I do this to get a look at the out of the box performance and what most people should expect then I take a look at what the cooler is capable of if noise isn’t an issue. The stock settings came out good with the card basically running in line with the GTX 1070 Gaming X I tested a while back. This was still two degrees higher than the lower overclocked GTX 1050 Ti, though. I actually think this is related to the silent functionality of the card where it turns the fans off until they are needed. Because the 1050 Ti doesn’t put out a lot of heat and because the heatsink on this card is large the fans actually didn’t come on for a while. By the time they do the temps end up a little higher than if the fans were on all the time. The 100% fan speed test was night and day from the base card as well, showing that two fans and a proper heatsink with heatpipes makes a big difference, even with the big overclock.

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

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.