Making that first transition into PC gaming from the console world can be difficult and the prices of quality performing video cards can be intimidating. However with the GTX 650ti starting around $150 things just became a little easier.
The GTX 650Ti is the final entry in the Nvidia Kepler series of GPUs and is an affordable upgrade to mondernize your PC gaming.
I put the reference card that Nvidia supplied me with into the slot that used to hold my GTS 250, a card that I purchased 3 years ago, and still felt comfortable playing games. My 250 still gave me a good frame rate on games albeit having to play them at 720p and I wasn’t expecting such a large improvement with the GTX 650Ti.
When I started up Borderlands 2 and proceeded to crank up the visuals to the max settings in 1080p, everything looked great. I suddenly couldn’t believe that I had been satisfied with my old card. The visuals look much better than on the console counterparts, and so did the framerate, even if it did start to drop during certain scenarios.
This card seems to be the price point to sway some console gamers over to the PC world, and is more than enough to keep their visual experience superior at least for the 12 to 14 months.
Even if your current GPU still out performs the 650Ti don’t just dismiss it. Games that use Physx tech (Borderlands 2, HAWKEN, etc…) let you dedicate a second video card to handle all the cloth tearing and water flowing, letting your primary card worry about keeping a higher frame rate.
The reference board supplied (pictured above) only had 2 DVI ports and a mini HDMI port, but the card is capable of handling four simultaneous displays. Since the card has the HDMI support, it makes putting the PC in the living room, hooking up an Xbox controller and trying out Steam’s big picture mode a lot easier than fiddling with different adapters and audio wires to get everything working.
$150 is less than a brand new Wii, and as long as you have a competent PC to slide it into, you can have a machine that is capable of playing games that look better than anything Nintendo has shown for the Wii U. The GTX 650Ti is available starting today. Players who pick up the new GPU will also get a digital copy of Assassin’s Creed III, complete with “enhanced DirectX11 graphics” when the game is released on November 23.
Still wondering about the GTX 650Ti? Check out the Nvidia’s launch video:
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