One of the most popular purchases and upgrades for computers nowadays is the video card. It’s hard to deny since the gaming market is one of the primary drivers of the PC industry. This is why when people buy PCs nowadays video cards are what they look at.
Not all video cards are equal though. The more powerful it is, the more expensive it is. However, as technology marches on, this power can be made more affordable. A primary example of that is the Palit GTX 1050. The GTX 1050 is the latest entry in Nvidia’s attempt to corner the budget gaming market.
Power in an affordable package
Nowadays, the gaming standard is for 1080p. That’s a pretty high benchmark and for many people that can be an expensive upgrade. However, Nvidia changes that with its release of the GTX 1050. Comparable to last year’s GTX 950, the biggest difference is the price point. It is nearly a hundred dollars cheaper.
I don’t know about you, but I can think of a lot of things I can do with a hundred dollars in savings. With the GTX 1050, you can play modern games at a decent performance level, without breaking the bank. The extra money you can turn to buying additional upgrades, like an SSD or even more RAM.
What can one expect from the GTX 1050? First of all, the 1050 is the cheaper of the pair of 1050s. Its bigger brother the 1050 Ti is a bit more powerful but more expensive. You’ll be getting lower performance with the 1050 but that’s to be expected for the price.
The 1050 features 640 CUDA cores and has 2GB of DDR5 RAM. This lets it reach around 112GB/s of memory. This is good for a budget card and lets it compete with more powerful cards.
The 1050 only uses around 75W of power. This means it is a good upgrade card for a bit older machines since it doesn’t need that much electricity. If you only have money for a single upgrade, the 1050 is one of your best options out there.
The 1050 is part of the Pascal line of cards and has all of the features of the line. This includes DirectX 12 support, HDMI output, and more. Performance wise, this is one of the best cards that you can get at its price-point. It handily beats its competition, the Radeon RX 460.
If you want to game at a decent level of frames per second, the 1050 does exactly that. At 1080p, it can render around 40 to 50 frames a second on most games. If you lower it, you’ll get even better performance.
If you’re looking for a cheap upgrade, then the Palit GTX 1050 is for you.
