Just a few days over one year ago today Nvidia launched their First Kepler card, the GTX 680. If you asked me then if I would be covering a new Kepler based card (other than a GK110 based card) I doubt I would have believed you. With AMD introducing their HD 7790 this weekend that filled in a gap in their product lineup Nvidia had a response right away with their GTX 650 Ti Boost. The GTX 650 Ti Boost falls between the GTX 650 Ti and the GTX 660, right in the middle of their “Sweet Spot” cards. These are cards that should play any game on the market at 1080p and a price point that most can afford. Let’s look a little closer and see what it is all about.In Game Performance
Our in game testing of the GTX 650 Ti Boost is very interesting. In most cases the GTX 650 Ti Boost came in on par and sometimes ahead of the HD 7850 OC’ed card. In some cases like Dirt 3, Crysis 2 DX9, and the Unreal Heaven benchmark it actually outperformed the HD 7870 that we tested just this last week. That is impressive considering its competition should be the HD 7790. Nvidia’s original claim of it playing every game on the market could very well be true, but if you consider 60 FPS to be the standard, then games like Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Shogun 2, and Sniper Elite v2 fall a little short. Having said that, the in game performance is still very impressive and I wouldn’t think twice when putting one into a computer for anyone who wants great performance on a budget.
