Asus GTX 1050 Dual Edition
1080p on the cheap
Now that the low-end variants of Nvidia’s new Pascal GPU are starting to become more available, we’ve been sent a couple of other brands’ versions of this entry-level gaming card. The Asus GeForce GTX 1050 Dual Edition is arguably the cheapest of the bunch, at just $220 for a card that will deliver excellent performance in most games at middling settings. Has Asus had to take an axe to the GeForce GTX 1050 to get the price so low?
To be frank, when we’re talking about graphics cards at this price point, manufacturers don’t have much wiggle room regarding budgets to add extra features, so don’t expect anything mind-blowingly different to other GeForce GTX 1050s.
Asus has gone for a dual fan solution, and it’s covered by a rather rudimentary plastic shroud. The white colour scheme is meant to complement Asus Z170 motherboards. Asus has used its “Super Alloy Power II” components to deliver power to the card, which is basically its way of saying they’re using premium capacitors for a smoother power supply. There’s no extra power supply though, such as a six-pin input, which suggests they’re sticking with the basic 3+1 phase power design that is part of Nvidia’s reference design, so don’t expect super high overclocks.
Asus’ proprietary GPU Tweak II software allows for one click performance adjustments, between gaming, overclocking and other modes. This basically adjusts the GPU and fan speeds, but out of the box this card has gone for the standard GeForce GTX 1050 speeds. The base clock speed is 1354MHz while boost bumps this up to 1455MHz, both identical to the speeds that Nvidia has rated the GP107 GPU for. 2GB of onboard memory is included, and it too is clocked at the standard speed of 7008MHz. We’re sure intrepid tweakers will be able to squeeze a little more performance out of this budget card, but don’t expect to break any world records.
The outputs are also exactly as Nvidia has specified, with just a single of the following: DVI-D, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.2. Considering Gigabyte’s rival product, which is just $10 more, offers three HDMI 2.0 ports, this is a little disappointing.
Asus has delivered an extremely cheap offering in this card. If you’ve got an extra $30 or so spare, we’d suggest a card based on the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti instead, but if your budget simply has no room to move, this card is about as cheap as you’ll get.