Asus GTX 650-E review

The Asus GTX 650-E is the company’s tweaked version of the Nvidia GTX 650 reference design. This graphics card has 384 CUDA cores, 1GB of GDDR5 RAM and a core clock speed of 1,071MHz, which is a slight increase on Nvidia’s reference speed of 1,058MHz.

Its relatively modest specification is matched by its relatively modest dimensions, with the GTX 650-E measuring just 200mm, which is small enough to fit in all but the tiniest of PC cases. It’s worth noting, however, that although the GTX 650-E only consumes one slot on your PC’s back plane, its fan will obscure an adjacent slot.

It draws power from the PCI-E bus, so you don’t need to have a high-spec power supply with one or more PCI-E power connectors to run the GTX 650-E. This makes the GTX 650-E best suited to those who need more graphics power than that supplied by onboard graphics but don’t need the greater power or cost of a card such as the GTX 660 or GTX 670.

In Dirt Showdown with quality settings set to Ultra, 4x anti-aliasing and a resolution of 1,920×1,080, the GTX 650-E provided a frame rate of 20fps. That isn’t smooth enough for comfortable play, but reduce the quality to High and the frame rate leaps to 53fps. Reduce the resolution to 1,280×720 and the frame rate shoots up to 80fps, and Dirt Showdown still looks good.

These frame rates are noticeably slower than those provided by our reference HD 5770, which provided average frame rates of 24.9fps at Ultra settings, 4x anti-aliasing and 1,920×1,080 resolution, and 86.5fps at a resolution of 1,280×720 with 4x anti-aliasing and quality set to High. Even so, this shows that the GTX 650-E should have no problem playing most of the latest games as long as you’re willing to compromise with quality settings and resolution.

A small settings tweak downwards and Dirt 3 Showdown ran smoothly at 53fps

Sadly, the GTX 650-E failed our more challenging Crysis 2 benchmark at a resolution of 1,920×1,080, 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra detail, scoring just 14.9fps. Once again, just a little compromise can produce great frame rates, and we achieved an average frame rate of 42fps at a resolution of 1,920×1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and quality settings reduced to High. Even at these settings, Crysis 2 still looks great.

In comparison, our reference HD 5770 produced very similar, sometimes slightly less, frame rates in Crysis 2. At a resolution 1,920×1,080 and Ultra quality it only just passed the benchmark, scoring 15.6fps. After dropping the quality settings to High, the HD 5770 produced a frame rate of 40.8fps.

If you need a card that can play games as graphically challenging as Crysis 2, you might be better off with a card such as the GTX 660 Ti, which produced an average frame rate of 42fps when running Crysis 2 at 1,920×1,080 with Ultra quality settings.

The Asus GTX 650-E provides three output ports: HDMI, DVI and VGA, and you can use all three in Nvidia’s three-screen Surround mode. We ran Dirt Showdown in Surround mode at a resolution of 5,760×1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra quality settings and it failed our benchmark, scoring just 13.9fps. To get a smooth, playable frame rate at 5,760×1,080, we had to reduce the quality to Low. Sadly, the GTX 650-E failed all our Crysis 2 benchmarks in surround mode at 5,760×1,080, scoring just 14.9fps. The GTX 650-E will have no problem driving multiple monitors for desktop use, but you should buy a more powerful graphics card if multiple monitor gaming is a must.

All the outputs most people will ever need

Cheap and economical it may be, but the Asus GTX 650-E is also open to overclocking should you the desire to do so. It comes with Asus GPU Tweak, which lets you adjust the clock speed of the memory and GPU, as well as the card’s fan speed and the GPU’s voltage. We boosted the GTX 650-E’s core clock speed by 10 percent and achieved a frame rate of 83fps at a resolution of 1,920×1,080 and High quality with 4x anti-aliasing . At its stock clock speed, the GTX 650-E scored 80fps under the same conditions. It’s great that you tweak the GTX 650-E, and tinkering with the settings is certainly fun, but don’t expect frame rates to increase fantastically.

As much as we’d all love to have a couple of GTX Titans or GTX 690s in our PCs, such graphics cards are expensive, power-hungry and over-powered for the needs of many people. The GTX 650-E is great for those who want to play the latest games and are willing to compromise on quality settings. You don’t have to compromise that much either, with both Dirt Showdown and Crysis 2 delivering good-looking graphics at smooth, playable frame rates with a little quality adjustment. It’s quiet too, making it appropriate for PCs where a little tranquillity is desired, and the fact that it’s bus-powered means its compatible with a wider range of PCs.

If you can spend more and demand much better gaming performance, then you should consider the Nvidia GTX 660 Ti or the AMD Radeon HD 7870, but both of those cards cost more than twice the current price of the Asus GTX 650-E. If you want something quiet, economical and cheap with enough power to play games, then the Asus GTX 650-E will suit you.