As with every range of graphics cards from Nvidia, it has been expected for some time that the firm would flesh out its range beyond the currently available Titan X, 1080, 1070, and 1060. As well as top end additions like the expected 1080Ti at some point in the future, there will be a GTX 1050, for which we now have the specifications.
This is the rumored GP107 part that we’ve been looking for since AMD really brought the fight to Nvidia with its strong bang-for-buck RX line of graphics cards. The GTX 1050 will compete directly in that more entry-level, mid-range bracket, but its specifications are still no slouch.
According to the GPUZ screenshot from Benchlife (via WCCFTecH), the graphics core is based on the same 16nm FinFET transistor design found on the higher-end Pascal cards and will feature 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM, which offers as much as 112.1GBps of bandwidth.
The Core itself has 768 shaders and operates at a base clock of 1,316MHz, boosting up to 1,380MHz when needed. This allows for a texture fill rate of 84.2 Gigatexels per second, which is a stark figure as it’s nearly a 60-percent improvement over last generation’s GTX 950.
Another noticeable improvement over its predecessor is the GTX 1050’s power draw. Despite operating with much higher clock speeds (nearly 300MHz more), with double the memory, the TDP is only 75 watts, versus last generation’s 90w.
Of course a big part of that is the die size shrink. The GTX 950 was built on the older 28nm standard, so 16nm was a sizeable reduction.
That ultra-low TDP does also mean that the GTX 1050 does not require an external power cable, as its larger siblings do. There will likely be multiple versions of this card, with alternative coolers, overclocked core and memory, and potentially some alternative memory configurations, but chances are we won’t ever see it crest that 75w barrier, as it would stray beyond the specifications of PCIExpress at that point — or require an additional power connector.
In terms of price and availability, we don’t have much information yet, though the expected price tag is around the $150 mark. This would pit the GTX 1050 directly against the RX 470 from AMD, which is likely a pretty even contest.
