ZOTAC GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition Review

Designed for 1080p gamers, the GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition graphics card carries a dual-fan configuration and an 8% GPU factory overclock.

Product on Review: GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition
Manufacturer & Sponsor: ZOTAC
Street Price: £160 GBP / $150 USD

In the graphics card department, NVIDIA has the low-end covered with their new GTX 1050 and the mid-range is occupied by the GTX 1060, but what about in between? Enter the GTX 1050 Ti. The Ti variant was announced alongside the 1050 and still offers gamers the opportunity to take advantage of gaming at 1080p but should allow for even stronger performance. A boost in CUDA cores, texture units, VRAM and clock speeds paves the way for more frames per second in the latest triple A titles.

Under the spotlight today is the ZOTAC GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition. This graphics card makes use of super-compact dimensions which project it into the small form factor arena. Combine the small footprint with PCI Express bus power and we have in our hands a rather versatile piece of kit which also bears an 8% overclock to the GPU.

ZOTAC on their GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition

Everyone deserves great gaming. That’s why we created the fast, powerful ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition. Now you can turn your PC into a true gaming rig, powered by NVIDIA Pascal™–the most advanced GPU architecture ever created. It’s loaded with innovative NVIDIA Game Ready technologies that let every gamer experience the latest titles in their full glory in super compact form.

Technical Specifications

Below are the technical specifications surrounding GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition, supplied directly from ZOTAC:

GPU
GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti
CUDA cores
768
Video Memory
4GB GDDR5
Memory Bus
128-bit
Engine Clock
Base: 1392 MHz
Boost:1506 MHz
Memory Clock
7 GHz
PCI Express
3.0
Display Outputs
DisplayPort 1.4
HDMI 2.0b
DL-DVI
Multi Display Capability
Triple Display
Recommended Power Supply
300W
Power Consumption
75W
DirectX
12 API feature level 12_1
OpenGL
4.5
Cooling
Dual 70mm Fan
Slot Size
Dual Slot
Supported OS
Windows 10 / 8 / 7
Card Length
174mm x 111.15mm
Accessories
User Manual

Detailed Look & Video Review

For this review, we’ve produced a video review over on our YouTube channel which details all of the included features, and takes a close look at the PCB/cooling solution along with the addition of some gaming benchmarks. Please check out our video review or hit play on the video below:

Test Setup & Methodology

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even 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 latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

Hardware

Taking Intel’s High-End Desktop platform, our hardware utilises the Intel X99 chipset. Combined with this we use the Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic and achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4 at 2666MHz and a 750GB SSD 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:
ZOTAC GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition (NVIDIA 375.57)
ZOTAC GTX 1050 MINI (NVIDIA 375.57)
XFX RX 460 DD Edition (Crimson 16.9.2)

Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:

Motherboard: MSI X99A Workstation
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw

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’ve chosen:

DOOM (OpenGL 4.5 & Vulkan)
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally

To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools, FRAPS and PresentMon.

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

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy

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

Power, Temperatures, Acoustics

To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Heaven 4.0 which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

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 set Heaven 4.0 running continuously for ~30 minutes recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.

Acoustics

ZOTAC’s GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition uses two 70mm cooling fans and this solution presents us with low-noise operation. Click here to listen to a demo!

Overclocking

To overclock the GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition we used the MSI Afterburner Tool since it gives extensive options for modifying the GPU and memory clock.

Overclocking the card was relatively easy and we were able to nudge up the frequencies to an admirable level. Our result took the GPU clock up to 1594MHz (1708MHz Boost) and modifying the memory clock up to 1752MHz. By tweaking both these elements of the card, we are able to tap into better 3D performance. Below is an example of how the overclock compares to the stock settings in Unigine Heaven 4.0.

DX12: 3DMark Time Spy

With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.

DX11: 3DMark FireStrike

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.

DX11: Unigine Heaven 4.0

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.

DX11: 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.

DX12: DOOM OpenGL 4.5

By default DOOM utilises an OpenGL 4.5 renderer, and is one of relatively few Windows PC titles to not use DirectX 12. It tests how well NVIDIA and AMD’s GPUs deal with a less mainstream approach, especially in regards to driver optimisations, and like all of id titles stretches graphics quality to the limit.

DX12: DOOM Vulkan

id have also released an optional Vulkan rendering path for DOOM. This API is a development of AMD’s Mantle low level which has been taken on board by the Kronos Group for implementation as the next generation of Open graphics APIs. Like DirectX 12 Vulkan is capable of Asynchronous Compute in specific configurations.

DX12: Total War: WARHAMMER

Total War: WARHAMMER is a pseudo Real-Time Strategy title which leverages DirectX 12 to render huge numbers of complex units on screen at any one time.

DX12: Rise of the Tomb Raider

Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider is the sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot. An enormously challenging title graphically, the developers also released an optional DirectX 12 render path for Windows 10 users. Although it has undergone a number of iterations this rendering pathway notably doesn’t currently utilise the full capabilities of DirectX 12.

DX12: HITMAN

Yet another DirectX 12 title, 2016’s Hitman from Square Enix and developer IO Interactive has a more robust DirectX 12 implementation than Rise of the Tomb Raider. We’ve tested at a full range of resultions, from 1080p through to 4K, which provides a look at the impact of GPU speed and memory utilisation.

DX11: DiRT Rally

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Conclusion

Bridging the gap between the GTX 1050 and GTX 1060, the Ti we’ve looked at today is perhaps the ideal graphics card for gamers who are seeking to engage in 1080p gaming with high detail preset enabled.

Between the GTX 1050 and RX 460, the 1050 is the obvious choice for better overall performance and this Ti variant only fortifies this point. The 60 FPS sweetspot is easily achievable via today’s ZOTAC GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition, in some cases even exceeding 70 FPS.

As far as cooling is concerned, the heatsink and cooling fans ZOTAC has used do a great job in keeping things under control. Though, in the MINI series of the 1050, we prefer a single fan – it achieves great thermals and yet emits less noise.

We managed to modify the GPU and memory clock speeds beyond the 8% which ZOTAC applied to the GPU clock straight out of the factory, hitting an impressive 13% increase. Nudging both attributes yields a boost in performance – which in turn translates to some extra frames in the gaming arena.

The size and power requirements for the GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition make it the perfect candidate for an aging computer system or for the casual gamer who requires a boost to performance without having to upgrade key components such as the PSU. Not only does this card run without the need to connect up cables from the PSU, but it also squeezes into the smallest of computer cases due to the small physical dimensions. This footprint will cause such a card to be an attractive proposition for system builders using small form factors like Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX.

This Ti variant of GTX 1050 with its factory overclock comes in at a cost of £160 GBP / $150 USD. This is quite a bit more than the standard GTX 1050 but we do have superior onboard specifications and the results on the previous pages speak volumes for the improved gaming performance. However, if you do have a tight budget which doesn’t allow for a Ti purchase, manually overclocking the something like the ZOTAC GTX 1050 MINI will be a cheaper route and could present some similar figures in-game.

Its small footprint, tidy aesthetics and low power consumption make the ZOTAC GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition a superb choice for 1080p gamers!

VIDEO REVIEW – VORTEZ TV

Pros
+ Neutral aesthetics
+ Small footprint
+ Powered by PCI Express slot
+ Low power consumption
+ Manually overclocks very well
+ Quiet & effective cooling
+ Great 1080p performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 5-year warranty

Cons
– No backplate

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.