Here at KLGadgetGuy, we’ve covered the high-end and the mid-range variants of Nvidia’s GeForce 10 Series of graphics card. So it is only fitting that we should touch upon the entry level offering that Nvidia has. With that in mind, allow me to introduce to you the ASUS’s GeForce GTX 1050-2G graphics card, the company’s vanilla version of the GTX 1050. So how does this graphics card fare? Read on to find out.
Design
Size-wise, the GTX 1050-2G is a very compact card. Measuring at a mere 19.2cm in length, this graphics card is small enough that it’ll fit in almost any case size available. The overall design of the card is pretty simple as well, with a race car-like cooler sitting on top of the PCB itself. Flipping over to the back, you’ll notice that the card doesn’t come with a backplate.
For output, the GTX 1050-2G comes with a DVI port, a HDMI port and a DisplayPort. The card doesn’t come with any power connectors, meaning that it draws power directly from the motherboard itself.
Test Bench Hardware Specifications
Processor: Intel Core i5 6600
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-K
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury 8GB DDR4-2666MHz x 2
Storage: Kingston HyperX Fury 240GB SSD. Seagate ST4000VN000 4TB
OS: Windows 10 Home
Graphics Driver: Nvidia Driver 376.09
Casing: CoolerMaster N300
ASUS Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050-2G Specifications
Synthetic Benchmarks
3DMark Benchmarks
Unigine Valley Benchmarks
Game Benchmarks
Hitman
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Battlefield 1
So here’s the deal with the GeForce 1050-2G. As one can expect from an entry level graphics card, you won’t be able to ramp up the settings is some of the more resource intensive games on the market at 1080p. The card can handle popular games such as Dota 2, Hearthstone and Overwatch on High settings with a framerate above 60FPS. Impressively, the GTX 1050-2G is even able to run Battlefield 1 at High settings with an average framerate of 60FPS. That being said, the Frostbite engine is a marvel of programming, so the card’s performance can partially be attributed to it.
Once you move on to other games though, the performance becomes more in line with expectations. For Hitman, the card manages to clock in an average FPS of 60 on Medium and 49 on High. For Mankind Divided, the card manages a 49.8FPS average on Medium, and a 33.7FPS average on High.
Temperature
On the temperature side of things, the ASUS cooler that comes with the card manages to keep it cool even under heavy load. The maximum temperature recording that was detected is 78 degrees celsius, while the average temperature sits at 65 degrees celsius. The fan runs pretty silent as well as I did not hear any obvious whirling of the fan coming from my CPU.
