MSI GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Gaming X Review

The Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti graphics card fills the notable ~£120-170 hole that exists in the mainstream market. The graphics card brings the section's offerings onto the latest-and-greatest in Nvidia GPU architecture – Pascal. A slot has been opened up for AMD to counter with a full-fat Polaris 11 GPU (RX 460X? RX 465?) to battle the GTX 1050 Ti at £139. But whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.

With its GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X, MSI takes the simple GPU and gives it a healthy out-of-the-box overclock while sitting below the superb dual-fan Twin Frozr VI cooler. A 6-pin PCIe power connector is added for good measure and this actually helped to deliver solid overclocking results.

Temperatures, power consumption, and noise output are all superb. The GPU core stayed below 65°C throughout the entirety of our testing and we were hard-pushed to detect any significant fan noise even under Furmark load. But the power draw figure is really impressive and puts the GTX 1050 Ti in territory where AMD's competition, in terms of both price and performance, simply cannot reach.

While I don't think the 6-pin PCIe power connector should deter potential buyers with a capable power supply, it does undoubtedly limit the Gaming X's target market. Buyers looking to upgrade an off-the-shelf Dell or HP PC with a modest PSU are likely to need to look at alternative GTX 1050 Ti models.

And then we get to the real sticky point for MSI's GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X – its price. At around £165-170, the card is (easily) within 10% of RX 470 4GB pricing. It's actually around £25-30 (18-22%) more expensive than the cheapest GTX 1050 Ti offerings, which start at £139. In this section of the market, ~£30 (~22%) is a huge difference and takes you from a comfortable perch between RX 460 4GB and RX 470 4GB, to knocking on the door of the significantly faster RX 470 offerings.

Despite our Sapphire RX 470 4GB Nitro+ comparison card costing around 9-12% more than MSI's GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X, there are instances where the AMD chip is more than 50% faster. At no point does MSI's GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X get even close to within 10% of the performance from Sapphire's RX 470 4GB. When talking about pricing and performance, numbers such as 10% and 50% in the same sentence generally give indication of an imbalance somewhere in the chain.

While the MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X is a superb take on GP107, you would have to be extremely keen on the Nvidia-specific features or lowering your system's power usage to purchase it over the significantly faster (and slightly more expensive) RX 470 4GB.

But if you can't stretch to RX 470 budget, even the £20-30 premium over more basic GTX 1050 Ti offerings may be hard swallow. That said, MSI's Gaming X model does offer an extremely polished and well-built version of GTX 1050 Ti in return for its price premium.

The MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X is available to pre-order at Overclockers UK for £169.99 (inc. VAT).

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Pros:

• Excellent power efficiency from the underlying GTX 1050 Ti and GP107 GPU.
• Good performance for 1920×1080 gaming.
• Twin Frozr VI is a superb cooler – both in terms of noise and temperatures.
• 0% fan speed mode up to 60°C, which even allows for light gaming.
• Strong build quality.
• Stylish design including white and red LEDs.

Cons:

• Price increase over basic GTX 1050 Ti models is significant.
• Pricing is too close to the significantly faster RX 470 4GB models.
• Should ship with the fastest OC mode enabled by default, instead of relying upon software.
• 22.9cm length could cause issues for those with budget motherboards or small cases.

KitGuru says: A premium version of GTX 1050 Ti with a superb cooler and good build quality. But the price premium over basic GTX 1050 Ti models is significant and RX 470 4GB is significantly faster for only a small amount more cash.

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