Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti to offer HD gaming experience at a lower cost

Nvidia has recently released 2 new graphics cards, the GTX 1050 and the GTX 1050 Ti. The two cards boast 300 percent boost in performance over the GTX 650. Both have the power of Pascal but have a more affordable price.

The new graphics processing units (GPUs) are prepped up for the new generation of games, with more attention to big E-Sports titles such as DOTA 2 and League of Legends.

The new graphics cards are built around Nvidia's GP107 graphics processor, manufactured on Samsung's 14nm FinFET process. It has a die size of 135mm^2, 3.3 billion transistors, and a 128-bit memory interface. Both cards using the GP107 will have 32 ROPs.

The GTX 1050 wields 640 CUDA cores with a base clock of 1,354MHz and boost clock of 1,455MHz. Some of Nvidia's hardware partners are goosing those clocks for faster performance. It also has 2GB of GDDR5 memory at 7Gbps, resulting in 112GB/s of memory bandwidth. Both cards are less power-hungry than the more powerful GPUs; they only consume up only 75 watts of power and require a power source that is minimum of 300 watts.

The 1050 Ti will be released to be Virtual Reality ready, and that the card will be fully compatible with the Oculus Rift. However, Nvidia still urges users to purchase a GTX 1060 for a truly encompassing VR experience. The cards, however, do not have the Scalable Link Interface, which means that user cannot have more than one installed

The GPUs are strictly for its hardware partners, including Asus, EVGA, Galaxy, Gigabyte, IGame, Inn3D, MSI, Palit and Zotac. The companies can design their GTX 1050 series cards however they see fit, and a wide range will be available to users. Among these are cards with a 6-pin power connector, which can significantly increase the overclocking headroom. Nvidia says some of the factory overclocked cards will push boost clocks into the 1900MHz range.

The launch date for the GPUs will be on Oct. 25 with the GTX 1050 costing US$109 (AU$141) and the GTX 1050 Ti costing US$139 (AU$180) . There would be no Founders Edition in store for these two cards.