It’s been a while since the high and mid-range offerings from nVidia have been in the market and its just recently that they have started releasing their lower-midrange/upper-entry level products to fill the gap in their port folio. We’ve recently seen the mid-range GTX660 Ti show us some impressive performance and now we’re back with another nVidia GPU this time based on the GK107 GPU: the Geforce GTX650. MSI has sent over their GTX650 offering and also a part of the Power Edition family of overclock-friendly products. Let’s check this baby out and let’s make this showy!
[singlepic id=6441 w=580 h=300 float=center]MSI has a bit of a penchant for overclocking and the Power Edition series proves as their testament to commitment in that field. The latest addition to their Power Edition line is what we have for review today, the GTX650 from nVidia packing 384 CUDA Cores clocked in at 1058Mhz with a 1GB GDDR5 framebuffer on a 128-bit bus. MSI has taken their personal array of Military Class componentry, crammed it with triple-overvoltage capabilities and jammed a custom-made cooler on it. Along with the physical make of the card, MSI has also boosted the core clock to 1124Mhz while the memory frequency remains the same. MSI also offers a non-OC edition of this card but we’ll check out the OC edition for this review. Let’s check the card’s looks before we get to testing.
[toggle title=”SPECIFICATIONS”]Check-out the card’s specs on MSI’s product page here:Â http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N650-PE-1GD5-OC.html
[/toggle] [one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=10641 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half][one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=10642 w=260 h=180 Â float=center][/one_half] [one_fourth last=”no”][singlepic id=10643 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth][one_fourth last=”no”][singlepic id=10647 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth][one_fourth last=”no”][singlepic id=10651 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth][one_fourth last=”yes”][singlepic id=10652 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth] [one_fourth last=”no”][singlepic id=10654 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth][one_fourth last=”no”][singlepic id=10655 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth][one_fourth last=”no”][singlepic id=10659 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth][one_fourth last=”yes”][singlepic id=10650 w=120 h=120 float=center][/one_fourth]The card features a dual-slot design with a mostly light gunmetal cooler with a single cooler on top. In the package we can see another small box which houses another fan and this in turn serves as a second fan for Dual-Fan or Double Airflow mode. The top flap of the box shows us the possible configurations. The upper chassis of the cooler slides forward revealing a slot for the second fan to increase cooling on other areas of the card. The GPU itself feature two DVI outputs and a mini-HDMI port. One PCI-e power connector is required to power the GTX650.
PERFORMANCE
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 3770K 3.5Ghz (Turbo up to 3.9Ghz) |
| Motherboards | GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 |
| Cooling | Corsair H100 |
| Power Supply | Silverstone Strider Plus ST65F-P |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Predator DDR3-2400 8GB |
| Video Cards | MSI GTX650 Power Edition |
| Storage | Kingston HyperX SSD 120GB |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
We size up the MSI GTX650 against our gauntlet of games and setup our chart to pit it directly against the HD7770.
[tabs tab1=”OP: Racoon City” tab2=”STALKER: C.o.P.” tab3=”Final Fantasy XIV” tab4=”Sniper Elite V2″] [tab]Capcom’s Resident Evil spin-off title Operation: Racoon City puts us in the boots of Umbrella’s Delta Team comprising of their top operatives who get caught into the company’s twisted scheme in covering up their insidious activities.
[singlepic id=10669 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [tab]STALKER: Call of Pripyat is an FPS title from GSC Game World. The game was released in 2010 but being a DirectX11, is still relevant in most applications. The game features a benchmarking tool to assess the user’s system, doing a 4-scenario test to fully simulate every in-game environment.
[singlepic id=10667 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [tab]Another MMO installation in the storied Final Fantasy franchise, Final Fantasy XIV isn’t really the most hotly anticipated game but we’ll include it here since it has a nice benchmarking tool.
[singlepic id=10668 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [tab]Sniper Elite V2 is a remake of the acclaimed original game from 2009 which puts the player in the shoes of a World War 2 sniper in the heart of Germany. With an updated game engine, the visuals are heavily improved. The game has a benchmark tool to assess how the game will perform on a preset scenario.
[singlepic id=10666 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [/tabs] [tabs tab1=”Resident Evil 5″ tab2=”Devil May Cry 4″ tab3=”Battlefield 3″  tab4=”Unigine Heaven 3″] [tab]Resident Evil 5 sends players to uncharted regions as famed S.T.A.R.S. agent Chris Redfield.
[singlepic id=10671 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [tab]Devil May Cry 4 show’s how Capcom still has love for PC gamers. Follow Nero and Dante as they hack, shoot and slash their way through countless enemies in style in this awesome fast-paced action game.
[singlepic id=10672 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [tab]Battlefield 3 is one of the hottest titles of 2011 and continues to prove itself a worthy game. Based on DICE’s Frostbite Engine 2, this game’s lush details and visuals are just stunning but can really stress any modern GPU.
[singlepic id=10665 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [tab]Unigine Heaven 3.0 is the latest iteration of the benchmarking utility for the Unigine engine. This benchmark stresses any GPU with options for DX9 to DX11 tests and boasts highly impressive tessellation scenes.
[singlepic id=10670 w=550 h=600 float=center] [/tab] [/tabs]Bottom-line: The MSI GTX650 Power Edition stays true to its placing as a middle choice between the HD7770 and HD7750. The card averages 23.33% less than the HD7770 in our tests on 1920×1080 gaming. The card should perform beautifully on lower resolutions with a bit of details turned to medium or so.
TEMPERATURE & POWER CONSUMPTION
[singlepic id=10663 w=580 h=600 float=center]To measure both power consumption and heat, we stress the video card and record the peak values for heat and wattage. These are measurements taken from the wall socket so its the wattage being drawn by the entire PC. Take note that these also peak values and not the average that these cards will consume. To compute how much power is being drawn by the card, we subtract the idle temps from peak temps to get a rough idea of how much power the card draws. The GTX650 is rated for 64W. MSI’s Power Edition card draws around 75W maximum load considerably way lower than its intended rival the HD7770.
[singlepic id=10664 w=580 h=600 float=center]The GTX650 Power Edition card has 3 different modes of cooling and we can see from our graph above that on normal conditions, the card only varies by a small margin than its regular configuration. We do expect the card to subdue the increased temperature in our overclocked state.
OVERCLOCKING
The Power Edition family of products from MSI feature support for extensive overclocking. MSI bundles their latest Afterburner software with this card with overvoltage support which lets the end user perform further overclocking than standard models. On top of our OC edition card, we managed to pull a Unigine Heaven 3.0 stable 1360/1580 clocks using Dual-airflow mode. Great OC right there. And that’s with no voltage boost!
[singlepic id=10674 w=550 h=540 float=center]
CONCLUSION
For the most part we’ve seen the GTX650 from MSI perform at 2nd best to the HD7770. This is where nVidia positions the GTX650 and it performs rightfully so showing 23.33% average gap against the HD7770. The good news is that it does all this at 6% less power. From a purely numbers game, this doesn’t seem to equate well but the MSI does have its overclocking up its sleeve. We don’t really put much stock on OC performance as this is purely based on the users.
[singlepic id=10661 w=550 h=540 float=center]The GTX650 Power Edition is a souped up card with plenty of muscle for games especially when gaming in lower resolutions or detail settings which should make the card more appealing. This would make it the easier buy but certain conditions make the GTX650 a tough choice especially if you’re not particularly fixed in one side of the AMD/nVidia battle. As of this writing the MSI GeForce GTX650 Power Edition OC retails for Php7,200. The rivaling HD7770 Ghz Edition comes at a ridiculously low Php5,400 making the decision a no brainer and that’s to go for the latter. Recent price slashes has made it tough for the GTX650 and with AMD’s latest drivers promising 15% performance improvements for the HD7xxx series cards, its another bar against the GTX650.
With all the odds against the GTX650 right now it’s a tough call for the Power Edition. Still, if you’re mostly gaming with MMOs or other games that don’t require much graphics horsepower and don’t use much detail settings, and don’t have a 1920×1080 monitor, the GTX650 can delivery nicely with lower power draw than its competition. MSI has an outstanding, quality card with superior OC potential and a hella cool (figuratively and literally) heatsink design and if you’re quite adamant about staying on the nVidia side of the game, the MSI GeForce GTX650 Power Edition is for your consideration. With vanilla GTX650s from other vendors competing fairly with the HD7700 cards, MSI’s pricing puts their product on an uneasy spot. MSI needs the price drop badly to stay competitive.
