MSI GTX 650Ti BOOST OC Review

The GTX650Ti BOOST impressed us upon release. Today we take a look at the custom cooled and factory overclocked edition from MSI.

Product on Review: N650Ti TF 2GD5/OC BE

Manufacturer and Sponsor: MSI
Street Price: £154.99 inc VAT (at time of review)

When we first tested the NVIDIA GTX650Ti BOOST, we gave it our gold award, perhaps somewhat prematurely as inevitably, 2 months on we find a host of custom cooled and overclocked variants have hit the scene. One such card is the MSI GTX650Ti BOOST OC which features MSI’s famed Twin Frozr cooling technology and a factory overclock to further ‘boost’ performance.

The NVIDIA GTX650Ti BOOST faced heavy competition with AMD’s cost effective HD7850 so to even up the score, we will be testing MSI’s overclocked GTX650TI BOOST against a similarly overclocked HD7850 and budget HD7970 in today’s review to find out which card is not only the fastest, not only which offers best bang-per-buck but also, and perhaps most importantly, which offers the smoothest gameplay of all three entry level gaming graphics cards currently available.

About MSI Gaming Series Graphics cards

NOW YOU’RE GAMING WITH MSI
A graphics card is the single most important element for more FPS. As gamers, we understand that not just any graphics card “will do”. That’s why we bring you the best of the best. We don’t want to bug you with noise and heat, but we DO want to give you more performance. With MSI GAMING series graphics cards you get just that.

Specification

The card remains based on Kepler Technology by using the GK106 core and utilising a 28nm manufacuring process. Perhaps the most notable difference between the specifications above and that of the original GTX650Ti is that the memory interface has seen an improvement from a 128bit to a 192bit interface (3x64bit controllers). The reference card is also clocked to 980MHz however users will see a typical BOOST speed of 1033MHz. Today’s review sample is factory overclocked to an impressive 1033MHz resulting in a Boost clock of 1098. NVIDIA however claim most users will be able to overclock the card past 1100MHz (card dependent) which seems feasable however each card is different so it is reassuring that MSI have pre-overclocked and tested this card on your behalf.

It is also worthy of note that the BOOST version of the GTX650Ti we have for review today also features SLI, a key features that was missing from the vanilla GTX650Ti.

Power consumption is however slightly increased slightly to around the 115W in normal operating conditions with this figure increasing depending on the load conditions.

Here are the specs of today’s review sample compared to the competition:

The MSI card appears, on paper at least, to be at a slight disadvantage to the HD7850. The AMD card has more shaders and a bigger memory bus width. The MSI fights back with a higher clock speed and twice as much memory which is also clocked faster. The two cards are priced evenly but on paper we would say the HD7850 has the edge here…just. We will see later in the review how the difference in specification affects performance.

Features

Twin Frozr III

– Propeller Blade Technology generates 20% more airflow than traditional fan design.
– Dual 8 PWM fans with Super Pipe technology provide better heat dissipation.
– 22℃cooler and 10.2 dB quieter than reference design!!

MSI ALL Solid Capacitor

MSI Solid Capacitor Graphic Card MSI Graphics Card products utilities high quality solid capacitor. For the gamers and high-end users, this feature not only means that product has better quality components within, but also provide much stronger support while users want to engage in hard-core tuning.

Afterburner

Afterburner co-development by MSI and Rivatuner, MSI releases the ultimate graphics card utility “Afterburner”. This utility enables all MSI graphics cards users to boost performance and to monitor all kinds of critical information in real-time. Afterburner is a completely free utility which is compatible with almost all MSI graphics cards.

Live Update 5

This is a single utility software that automatically checks BIOS, driver and utility updates and installs for you , which can save your time for searching and lower the risk while updating.

PCI Express Gen 3 Standard

This advanced manufacturing technology reduces operating temperatures and improves performance, and when combined with the latest connectivity standard it can also deliver a staggering 32GB/s of bandwidth with compatible CPUs and motherboards, this means an even better gaming experience for gamers

HDMI + DVI Output

HDMI and DVI are the most comprehensive used interfaces for high definition video display. MSI adopts two interfaces to provide a complete output solution for users to enjoy the latest HD video such as blu-ray movie.

NVIDIA GPU Boost

Up until now, GPUs have operated at a fixed clock speed when playing 3D games, even if they have the potential to run faster. GPU Boost intelligently monitors graphics work load and increases the clock speed whenever possible. The result is that the GPU always performs at its peak and you get the highest frame rate possible.

NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround

Nothing is as breathtaking as playing your favorite games across three monitors. At 5760 x 1080, the expanded field of view fully engages human peripheral vision and provides for the most immersive experience in racing and flight simulators. Add in a fourth display to keep tabs on chat, email or web while you are gaming.

NVIDIA SLI Technology

Used by the most demanding gamers worldwide, SLI lets you link up to GeForce GTX series graphics cards together for astounding performance. And with NVIDIA’s track record for fast and frequent software updates, you’ll not only get the best performance in existing games, but future games too.

GeForce Experience

GeForce Experience is a new application from NVIDIA that optimizes your PC in two key ways. First, it maximizes your game performance and game compatibility by automatically downloading the latest GeForce Game Ready drivers. Second, GeForce Experience intelligently optimizes graphics settings for all your favorite games based on your hardware configuration.

Some enthusiasts will view (excuse the pun) altering settings to get the very best from a game one of the ‘fun’ elements of owning a powerful graphics card. Others just want to play their game of choice without the endless testing and benchmarking to determine what settings work best. Many don’t have the inclination or indeed the time to learn what effect each setting has upon the games visual elements.It soon becomes a bind when upon a new driver release those settings which were great before can be bettered (or lowered) for a better gaming experience. FXAA, TSAA, MMAA or simply AA. Low, medium, high, ultra texture settings along with overall visual settings can be all too confusing when configuring a games visuals and while it would be easy to just crank everything up to maximum and hoping for the best, this all too often results in choppy, unplayable gaming ruining the gaming experience.

NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience removes much of the guess work when configuring a game thereby giving users the means to jump straight into the game with the best optimised settings for there hardware.

This handy utility will also keep your GPU updated with the latest driver that can be set to automatically download, ready to be installed as soon as they are available and also it gives you access to the beta drivers.

How does it work?
GeForce experience requires an internet connection which, once connected to the NVIDIA Cloud datacenter will download optimal game settings that are tailored to your PC based upon CPU, GPU and monitor resolution.

Low end hardware will have the visuals reduced to improve framerates while high end hardware will inevitably have higher settings assigned. This is all done with a click of a button which ensures that the game not only looks great but perhaps more importantly, plays smoothly.

Testing of the settings are done by NVIDIA themselves who benchmark the game, set a framerate target to ensure smooth gameplay then adjust the settings to ensure both framerate and smooth gameplay are optimised.

In our own tests, the utility worked well and is great for those who want to jump straight into the game with the minimal of fuss and furore of adjusting GPU settings.

Our one complaint is that the supported games list requires expanding. While most of the popular games are supported, many, especially some older but very popular titles are not.

Packaging & Accessories

The outer packaging is a slight break from the norm being one of the new ‘Gaming Series’ GPUs. We quite like the dragon logo and appreciate the recognisable NVIDIA product tag which is now used throughout the NVIDIA board partners.

The rear of the box shows us some details of MSI’s military class components along with hte cards main feature list and minimum requirments.

The accessories are basic as with most cards at this price point so no surprises there. You get a user guide, driver CD, DCI-VGA adaptor and a PCIe power cable- twin Molex adaptor.

First Look

From a birds eye view, the MSI GTX650Ti Boost OC looks very familiar. that#s because this isn’t the first (or second) time we have seen the Twin Frozr III cooler which covers the whole of the graphics card. While the look of the cooler is now becoming a little long in the tooth. it is still a very effective heatsink as we shall see.

Again we see MSI use a dark brown PCB. We have bleated on about the use of brown PCB’s in the past so we won’t go over this again here however, we will say (again) we don’t like it, especially as in most PC systems it is the bit of the GPU you actually see!

the profile of the card is a different matter entirely. The single thick visible heatpipe looks menacing and the embossed, metallic MSI Twin Frozr III logo adds a neat finishing touch.

The I/O area is typical of graphics cards today featuring both DVI-I and DVI-D along with a HDMI 1.4a port and DisplayPort.

MSI recommend a minimum PSU rated to 450W carrying a 12v rating of 24A. A single 6pin power port tells us you will also need a 6 pin power cable or two spare MOLEX cables to use with the included adaptor.

SLI is afforded through the single SLI finger. With only one tab, you will only be able to match this to one other card so TRI/Quad SLI gaming is not possible with this GPU.

Let’s take a closer look at the card without the cooler…

Closer Look

The Twin Frozr III design comprises of an aluminium finned array soldered to a nickel plated copper baseplate out of which sprouts 3 heatpipes to further aid heat dissipation.

With the heatsink removed, we get to see the MSI GTX650TI Boost in all its nakedness. Just four memory IC’s frame the core (matched by a further four on the opposite side of the PCB). The VRM is packed close to the memory and GPU core with a quite an odd looking vacant spot nearest to the power port.

There doesn’t appear to be any reason to leave this space empty so why have it in the first place? The only reason we can think of is that the cooler would look odd overhanging the PCB and thus was trimmed to size.

The 4 power phases energise the GPU with a further phase reserved for the 2GB of GDDR5 memory. All of the components hail from MSI’s Military Class Components meaning they are meet MIL-STD-810G standards

The memory chips are produced by Hynix and carry a tag line of H5GQ2H24AFR R0C which is clocked to 6Gbps. We know this memory will overclock further than this which we will put to the test later in the review.

The GK106 Core is built on the same 28nm manufacturing process as the rest of the Kepler family. Equipped with 768 CUDA cores and an improved 192 bit memory interface the GTX650Ti Boost along with overclocking now enabled (GPU Boost) should allow the GTX650Ti Boost to compete with the AMD HD7850 and perhaps even surpass it.

Test Setup

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphic card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and where possible the same drivers unless a newer driver rectifies an issue we have encountered or significantly improves performance to such an extent that continuing with an outdated driver is not feasible.

We have also seen the emergence of frame time analysis. We covered this in a separate article here: GPU Reviews: Why Frame Time Analysis is important so we won’t go into the reasoning again but to summarise, our testing comprises both FPS testing and perhaps arguably more importantly, frame time analysis. We also look at overall performance by equating averages across the games and finally before concluding our review we take a look at value for money.

HardwareWith the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics cards on test:

MSI GeForce GTX 650Ti BOOST OC 2GB GDDR5
(Forceware 314.22)
HIS HD7850 IceQ X 1GB GDDR5
(AMD CAT 13.3 beta)

HIS HD7790 IceQ Turbo 1GB GDDR5

(AMD CAT 13.3 beta)

Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 3
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
BioShock Infinite
DiRT: Showdown
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included 3 of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Temperature, Acoustics and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we use the included iPower Meter found with our Thortech PSU. As system load figures obviously differ from idle it is extremely difficult to get an accurate figure of system draw and then simply take this figure away from the overall amount because each game will generate varying levels of CPU and hard drive activity. Dynamic power adjustments which fluctuate in game will also affect accurate power figures thus rendering any such power consumption calculations redundant at worst and approximate at best.

We will therefore take our system readings averaged over a benchmark run of Tessmark (100% load) and after 20 minutes of being idle in Windows 7. These can then be used as a comparison to other graphics cards to determine how much more or less power you can expect a GPU to consume.

Both the GTX650Ti BOOST and HD7850 consumed the same amount of power when placed under load which at around 250W should appeal to those who like to keep a check on the electricity bill.

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result as the card did not throttle with this application.

Despite being arguably the most powerful card on test, the MSI GTX650Ti BOOST only hit 61c under extreme load conditions. This is thanks to the fantastic cooling ability of the Twin Frozr III heatsink design. While it is not a new design the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke – don’t fix it’ fits perfectly.

Acoustics

The Twin Frozr cooler cools extremely well but as we have found with many high performance coolers, moise is often sacrificed for cooling. This isn’t so with the Twin Frozr because it is as quiet as a mouse breaking wind from 200 yards away. Very Impressive. Even under load the noise levels were still drowned out by ‘quiet’ case fans.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic)

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine: Heaven 4 (Synthetic)

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine: Valley

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 3 (FPS)

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 3 (FPS)

Crysis 3 from Electronic Arts is the fourth instalment of the Crysis franchise and sequel to Crysis 2. It uses the CryEngine 3 gaming engine which is perhaps the most advanced gaming engine to date and therefore the most demanding. The meme ‘Can it run Crysis’ has never been so apparent…

Farcry 3

Far Cry 3 is a tropical survival shooter video game from Ubisoft Montreal and Massive studios. It’s open world design has similar traits to it’s forbear Far Cry 2 but it does it all so much better. With stunning visuals and settings to bring a PC to it’s knee’s, this game is so much more than the ‘just another console port’ it was reported to be.

BioShock Infinite (FPS)

Set in 1912 during the growth of American exceptionalism, BioShock Infinite is a thrid person shooter developed by Irrational games and published by 2K Games. It is the third instalment of the BioShock franchise. the game utilises the Unreal Engine 3, modifying it with their own lighting engine to present a visually stunning experience like no other.

DiRT: Showdown (FPS)

DiRT Showdown is the new arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (FPS)

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

Value For Money

For those on a budget, this is perhaps the most important section of a graphics card review. For everyone else it will certainly make you think twice before calling the bank manager for an overdraft request. We calculate Value for money by taking the cost of the product and then dividing that figure by the overall performance figure which gives us a result in the guise of £ per frame – in effect how much every frame per second will cost you.

Gaming Experience (Frame Time Analysis)

Gaming experience is what we like to refer to as the Laymans term for Frame Time analysis. Frame time analysis is in its most basic sense how smooth your gameplay will be. Ever had a powerful card rendering at 100FPS with ease for it to stall for a split second before resuming? This is what Frame Time Analysis shows us: The peaks during an otherwise smooth gaming experience. This is presented to you in two ways, by showing you a line graph of a 60 second FTA capture using FRAPS and then by deducing the average and 99th percentile response times.

Some claim this should be the way graphics cards are tested and we won’t argue here because there is little point in having a card which churns out an average 100FPS if it has micro stutters lasting 50ms (GPU response time) which spoils the fluidity of the game.

Comment

The graphs above may appear very daunting however, what you want to see is a smooth line (not fuzzy) with very few peaks and troughs. While you are unlikely to notice peaks and troughs below 30ms, any peak above 30ms may be seen as a stutter during gameplay. This will however depend greatly on your own perceptions.

Average and 99th Percentile response times (Frame Time Analysis)

Here we take a look at both average (black) and 99th Percentile (coloured) response times of the graphics cards. It is highly unlikely a user will notice any micro stutter (also incorrectly referred to as lag but the effect can be interpreted to be similar) at anything below 30ms but every gamers perception differs.

Overclocking

For overclocking our AMD cards we will be using MSI Afterburner as this gives us all of the options we require.

Above is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the reference speeds and reference boost clocks

Above is a screenshot of the actual overclock we achieved Afternurner. The card wasn’t particularly receptive to overclocking, maxing out at 1113MHz giving us a total boost speed of 1178MHz. While this overclock is perhaps not the best one should bear in mind that the card arrives pre-overclocked so the gap between reference and overclocked speeds is somewhat lessened.

Above you can see the effect the overclock had on stock clocked results with Unigine’s Heaven 4. Not a bad increase but hardly Earth shattering.

Conclusion

The MSI GTX650Ti Boost is a fine card. In terms of both raw FPS and gaming experience, the MSI was the more powerful card, as seen in our frame time analysis. With HD7850s now standard with 2GB and even 4GB (look out for our review soon), the tables may well be turned but we can only work with what we have and the HD7850 1GB was not up to the task so with this in mind, we would give the MSI card the nod

Out of the three cards it certainly looked the best. The Twin Frozr design is getting a little dated but it can still hold it’s head high because when compared to other custom cooling designs on the market, especially at this price point, few can claim to be better looking or higher performing. Our one disappointment is the dark brown PCB MSI seem to persist with. If we had a beige PC case then colour choice of the PCB wouldn’t really concern us however with today’s aesthetically astute market, every visual detail can make the difference and brown just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid.

Giving this GPU an award was a relatively easy choice. It isn’t perfect so it is not platinum worthy, nor is it the highest performing, only just managing to churn our enough FPS when additional filtering was added to our benchmarks so our esteemed ‘Elite’ award is not fitting. It is however the best entry level graphics card available at present if you want the best balance of performance, value for money and aesthetic appeal thus, the MSI GTX650Ti Boost gaming series GPU is deserving of our Gold Award.

To summarise:
The MSI GTX650Ti Boost is an impressive entry level gaming card. The MSI cards smooth gameplay results tips the balance in its favour when compared to other GPUs of a similar ilk on the market.

Pros
+ Excellent Cooling & acoustics
+ Offered the smoothest game play on test
+ Military Class Components
+ 2GB GDDR5

Cons
– The HD7850 is a little quicker at a similar price point