Gadgetory

hey guys welcome back to hardware unboxed check out this little beauty I have with me today this is gigabytes new geforce gtx 1050 g1 gaming version and that makes it the biggest baddest 1052 year back model the company has on offer so I'm very very keen to check it out their standard factory overclocked card runs at a base clock of thirteen hundred and seventy-nine megahertz the wind force OSI model claims to 1392 megahertz and this fancy g1 gaming model hums along at fourteen hundred and seventeen megahertz though truth be told it will run much fast and that thanks to GPU boost three gigabyte suggests a typical boost frequency of fifteen hundred and thirty one megahertz but if you install the extreme engine software the boost clock can be up to fifteen hundred and fifty-six megahertz at the click of a button getting past all those megahertz what else does the g1 gaming card have to offer well for what is very much a budget GPU it seems gigabyte aren't messing around the gtx 1050 chip is cooled by surprisingly large wind force cooler featuring a pair of 90 millimeter fans the cooler also features a pair of copper heat pipes and three arrays of aluminium fins this all means it tips the scales 315 grams which is very heavy for an entry-level card the standard marketing lingo is all present here we have the unique blade fan design 3d active fans and ultra durable VGA components still this is a little good stuff the gigabyte fans run quiet and the semi passive mode is a nice touch though they can be found on most graphics cards these days the ultra durable components are legit though I can't honestly say how much difference it makes especially for a lower end GPU that isn't heavy on power still those looking to overclock should get the most out of this card thanks to its 4+1 power phases apparently in videos reference design which doesn't actually officially exist at least in the retail channel calls for a three plus one design the naked PCB weighs a hundred and ninety three grams while the full length backplate that we're about to look at adds another ninety four grams the backplate looks pretty swanky though I have to admit I'm not totally convinced by gigabytes black and orange a scheme I think probably a more safe bet would have been an all-black design or black and silver black and white might have been more the shot I don't know I just think that the black and orange won't appeal to everyone as much as a more safe color choice would if you will anyway the quality the backplate is excellent and once removed we see the Gigabyte is even added a thick thermal pad to help remove built-up heat from the backside of the vrm I hope you're taking notes EVGA I should know that the main heatsink cools the GPU and gddr5 memory chips but not the VRMs instead gigabyte is installed a separate little heatsink here which seems to add a job well enough and it collects air from the 90 millimeter fans oh and something else very much worth noting is that this card features or rather more crucially requires a 6 pin external PCIe power cable this is an important point given that the highlight to the 1050 series is the fact that it can run entirely from the power delivered by the PCIe slot by adding a 6 pin connector that requires a power input gigabyte is reducing the cards compatibility with older systems they of course have models that don't require this connector but what I want to know is how much difference does it make having the ability to potentially feed the GPU an additional 75 Watts that question should be answered by the time we hit the overclocking section of the review with that we should probably get on with the testing since this is a budget GPU priced well below 200 us we will be using our core i3 6100 T test machine for this review this processor doesn't have a problem getting the most out of the gtx 1050 and while we recommend viewers using desktop gaming rigs use these standard 6100 processor and not the low-voltage model that we have this lower clocked version does do a good job of representing the kind of performance those running older core i3 and even AMD APU rigs can expect anyway let's blast through the benchmarks the g1 gaming is an even factory overclocked one percent higher than the MSI OSI model yet we see it was three percent faster given how GPU boost 3 works I suspect this is down the fact the gear back card is being fed more power and more crucially probably runs cooler which is something we'll look into shortly this time we find a 4% boost for the g1 gaming over MSI's OSI model and that was enough to match the GTX 960 for gigabyte card in overwatch here is a look at how the gtx 1050 g1 plays overwatch please note this footage was recorded on a core i7 test system using shadowplay too smart for your own good Gears of War for around four percent faster on the g1 gaming with an average of 56 fps opposed to ms is 54 fps it appears as though the gigabyte card is holding slightly higher boost clock speeds testing with doom showed the g1 gaming model to be 3 FPS faster we're looking at the minimum and average frame rates virtually no performance gains were seen in battlefield one that said it was great to see player performance at 1080p using the ultra quality settings speaking of which here's a quick look at the battlefield 1 benchmark pass using the Giga Byte 1050 g1 gaming graphics card on the core i7 test rig note this is just a quick snippet of the past and not the entire thing which lasts 60 seconds while that extra power connected didn't result in added power consumption at least nothing worth noting the g1 gaming model sucked down 5 watts more which still makes it very efficient as for the operating temperatures well the g1 gaming is impressive via it never exceeded sixty degrees in our tests very cool stuff hey unfortunately we were only able to extract another 5% performance out of the g1 gaming graphics card through overclocking this took us from 56 FPS in Gears of War 4 to 59 fps I probably should point out that that's just one FPS more than what the MSI card achieved without an external power connector the end result was a 100% stable base frequency of fifteen hundred and seventy five megahertz with a boost clock of 1689 megahertz however when gaming the core clock frequency was pretty well stuck at eighteen hundred and sixty megahertz the gddr5 memory was also boosted from seven gigabits per second to eight gigabits per second the 10:50 g1 gaming certainly is a punchy little graphics card though unfortunately isn't without a few flaws but before we get to that let's talk about some of the good stuff the cooler is awesome normally you only see coolers of this caliber on higher-end cards such as your GTX 1060 s and things that are more expensive than that even when overclocked this g1 gaming cooler runs extremely quiet even under maximum load for extended periods of time and the out-of-the-box performance is good not mind-blowing but you know good for 1050 the addition of a 6 pin PCI II power connector is questionable it doesn't really help at all with overclocking while it hurts compatibility for no real game that's disappointing and based on what I found here no 1050 card should really feature an external power connector this isn't a deal breaker by any means after all the vast majority of computers destined for a little gaming action have at least one 6 pin PCI a power connector the real roadblock here is the price as I noted a few weeks ago in my unboxing boxes series the price ain't great I don't really want to rate gigabyte over the coals on this one though graphics card pricing tends to change like the wind next week the card could be ten or even twenty dollars cheaper that said right now the g1 gaming model is priced thirty u.s. above the MSRP and while that's ti territory meanwhile their base model factory overclocked or OSI model is priced 120 u.s. and twenty dollars cheaper than the g1 gaming this is the model I would get yes the cooler has been downgraded but it's still much more substantial than what you'll find on the msi car we reviewed at launch and it drops the six pin connector anyway I really like the 1050 g1 gaming I just don't like the current asking price that said the good news of my fellow Aussies is that the g1 gaming is more competitively priced down under whereas us-based shoppers are paying almost 30% more over base models we're getting stung half as much at 205 Ozzy as the 1050 pricing starts at around 180 Ozzy I should also note that the $180 model is it dinky looking Galax card with a much smaller single fan cooler and a rudimentary 2+1 power phase design so here Australia at least it seems that the 1050 g1 gaming is actually the card to get but as always pricing does vary quite dramatically from region to region anyway what do you guys think about gigabytes g1 gaming graphics card do you think they should have perhaps not bothered with the six pin connector like I do let me know in the comments below and wise keen to hear from you guys and keep your lids peeled because there will be a review coming up of the TI model so the 1050 TI g1 gaming graphics card and we'll see if that delivers any more with that six pin connector anyway that's all from me on this one I'll catch you guys next time