Recently, the budget segment of graphics solutions has been updated with the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1050. The new products are based on the 14-nm GP107 graphics processor of the NVIDIA Pascal architecture. The first reviewed video cards showed good performance results with a low overclocking potential. It’s time to take a look at what the best modifications of these new products have to offer. And the MSI video card of the Gaming line will help us with this.

MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming X 4G

The reviewed model belongs to the Gaming X series of cards, offering the best combination of performance among MSI products. These solutions are equipped by default with the highly efficient Twin Frozr VI cooling system and offer maximum factory overclocking.

The video card comes in a traditional box for this series, which is decorated in red tones. The package is minimal and includes only the most necessary — a disk with software and instructions.

MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4G looks like the top representatives of Gaming. A uniform style is maintained in the design of the casing of the cooling system, two fans of a special design are used.

Everything is done in red or black colors. Illumination of some elements on the body is used (red teeth, side logo). The total length of the video card is 23 centimeters.

The printed circuit board is shorter by a couple of centimeters. There is a single six-pin power connector in the corner, although regular versions of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti do not require external power.

Three connectors for image output are placed on the rear panel: DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI.

Let’s take a closer look at the cooling system. Although this device uses the Twin Frozr VI cooler, its design is simpler in comparison with older video adapters. One thick heat pipe with a diameter of 8 mm is involved. With direct contact technology, the tube is in direct contact with the surface of the graphics chip.

The heat pipe lies as tightly as possible in the groove of the base. Curving, it penetrates the side parts of the radiator. Also on the base there is a pair of blue thermal pads for contact with memory chips.

The radiator is made up of a series of thin aluminum plates. There are grooves on the surface of these plates in certain places — this structure allows you to better direct and distribute the air flow passing through the fins.

The entire structure is blown by two Power Logic PLD09210S12HH fans, which meet the 90 mm standard. The actual diameter of the blades is slightly smaller. The unique shape of the blades provides better dispersion and higher airflow pressure.

The printed circuit board uses black textolite and high-quality electronic components, which are also used in MSI’s top products. The GPU power system uses three phases, the GDDR5 memory power is single-phase.

The GP107-400-A1 has 768 CUDA stream processors with 48 texture units and 32 ROPs.

Four gigabytes of memory are provided by four Samsung K4G80325FB-HC28 chips. Half of the chips are cooled by the main cooler, the others are simply blown by a downward airflow.

Base core clock increased from 1290 to 1354 MHz with Boost Clock 1468 MHz. The memory operates at an effective data rate of 7 GHz.

The graphics card supports multiple work profiles, which can be switched via the MSI Gaming App. The initial settings correspond to the Gaming Mode. The faster OC Mode profile offers a combination of GPU frequencies of 1379/1493 MHz with memory boost up to 7100 MHz. Given the low heat generation and powerful cooling, you can safely use such a profile. In this review, we limited ourselves to the initial settings, since we still resort to manual overclocking.

During testing on an open bench, the peak core temperature did not exceed 63 ° C at 22 ° C indoors. At the same time, the fan speed barely exceeded 700 rpm, and they even spun with periodic stops. In harsher conditions inside a tight, poorly ventilated case, the rotation speed can be higher, but it is clear that the high potential of the cooler ensures low heating with almost no noise. The real Boost was kept at around 1772 MHz with very rare deviations down. The peak value of 1797 MHz was observed only in rare moments of switching to 3D mode. All this is illustrated below with monitoring data during testing of Metro: last Light and Tom Clancy’s The Division.

Note that regular versions of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti show a floating Boost frequency. For example, the ASUS EX-GTX1050TI-4G has an average Boost frequency slightly higher than 1600 MHz, although short-term peaks are higher than 1700 MHz. So with a 64 MHz difference in base frequency with standard versions, the real difference in Boost frequencies is higher, and the advantages of MSI Gaming are more impressive than it might seem from a banal comparison of factory specifications.

An important advantage of the MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X is the increased power limit. Under gaming load, even peak power consumption is less than 90% of the maximum. There’s room for further boosts here, and the power limit won’t limit Boost frequencies. Moreover, it can even be increased. For simple versions of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, the power limit is strictly fixed and locked to increase. With the latest version of MSI Afterburner, softvoltmod is supported. So the MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X has the widest overclocking options.

However, more than 2 GHz in the core, like in the top Pascals, could not be obtained. The GPU frequency limit was close to 1.9 GHz with a base frequency of 1474 MHz.

Real Boost kept within 1898-1911 MHz, peak values ​​1924-1936 MHz. And although the peak Boost does not differ much on the ASUS EX-GTX1050TI-4G during overclocking, the mid frequencies noticeably sag. So here the advantages of MSI are very significant. The potential of the memory turned out to be good, the GDDR5 chips were able to work without failures at 8088 MHz. Note that during overclocking, we resorted to increasing the voltage by 10 mV, which provided a gain of about 10 MHz. A more serious increase in voltage also gave a more serious gain in frequencies, but there was no complete stability.

The fan speed was manually increased to about 1100 rpm, which kept the operating temperatures cooler than they started. So overclocking the MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X is easy in silent mode.

For comparison with the analogue of the simple GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, the MSI frequencies were reduced to such a level that the Boost slightly exceeded 1600 MHz.