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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile: Review of an Outdated, Yet Relevant Solution for Budget Laptops

(Relevant as of April 2025)

Introduction

Even almost 8 years after its release, the mobile version of the GTX 1050 Ti remains a common GPU in some budget laptops. Despite its outdated architecture, it continues to attract users who do not require cutting-edge technology but value stability and affordability. This article will explore what the card is capable of in 2025, who it is suitable for, and whether it should be considered in an era dominated by RTX 40 series and RDNA 4.

Architecture and Key Features

Pascal Architecture: A Modest Legacy

The GTX 1050 Ti Mobile is built on the Pascal architecture (2016), created using TSMC's 16nm process. This was NVIDIA's first generation optimized for energy efficiency, which is critical for laptops.

Lack of Modern Technologies

The card does not support ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX Super Resolution. Its strength lies in "pure" performance without AI hardware accelerators or RT cores. From proprietary features, only the following are available:

- GPU Boost 3.0 — automatic overclocking up to 1493 MHz (depending on temperature);

- Adaptive VSync — minimizes stuttering;

- Ansel — create 360-degree screenshots.

Conclusion for 2025: The architecture is hopelessly outdated, but it has enough capabilities for basic tasks.

Memory: GDDR5 Limitations

Type and Size

The GTX 1050 Ti Mobile is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 with a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth is 112 GB/s (memory clock: 7 GHz).

Problems in Modern Games

- 4 GB Size: By 2025, many titles at medium settings require 6–8 GB of VRAM. For instance, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora at 1080p uses up to 5.5 GB. For the GTX 1050 Ti, this means a forced reduction in texture presets.

- Speed of GDDR5: New GPUs use GDDR6X (up to 1 TB/s), which is critical for rendering open worlds.

Summary: Memory is the main "bottleneck" of this model.

Gaming Performance: Realities of 2025

1080p: Minimum for Comfortable Gaming

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Patch 2.5): 25–30 FPS on low settings (without Ray Tracing);

- Fortnite (Chapter 6): 45–50 FPS (Medium, DLSS not available);

- EA Sports FC 2025: 60 FPS (High, thanks to Frostbite engine optimization).

1440p and 4K: Not for This Card

Even in lightweight projects (CS2, Dota 2), resolutions above 1080p result in FPS dropping below 60.

Ray Tracing: The technology is not supported at the hardware level.

Tip: Use modified low presets (for example, through the LowSpecGamer utility) to increase FPS.

Professional Tasks: CUDA in Action

Video Editing and Rendering

Thanks to 768 CUDA cores, the card can handle:

- Rendering in Blender (Cycles) on basic scenes;

- Editing 1080p video in DaVinci Resolve (without Fusion effects).

Limitations:

- The lack of Tensor Cores makes it impossible to use AI filters;

- The small memory size limits work with 4K materials.

Scientific Calculations

Support for CUDA and OpenCL 1.2 allows the GPU to be utilized in MATLAB or Python libraries, but performance is 3–5 times lower than that of the RTX 3050 Mobile.

Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP and Real Indicators

- Declared TDP: 50 W (max consumption — up to 65 W under load);

- Temperatures: 75–85°C in games (depending on the laptop's cooling system).

Cooling Recommendations

- Use cooling pads with fans;

- Regularly clean the coolers from dust;

- To reduce heat, limit FPS through the NVIDIA Control Panel.

Compatible Cases: Laptops with a thickness of 20 mm or more (for example, older Acer Nitro 5 models).

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 560X Mobile (2018):

- Pros: Support for FidelityFX Super Resolution (via drivers);

- Cons: 4 GB GDDR5, higher heat output.

NVIDIA GeForce MX570 (2022):

- Pros: Ampere architecture, 2 GB GDDR6;

- Cons: Fewer CUDA cores (not suitable for gaming).

Conclusion: The GTX 1050 Ti Mobile is still competitive in the budget segment but loses to even the Intel Arc A350M (2023) in support of modern APIs.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: Laptops with the GTX 1050 Ti Mobile require a standard adapter of 90–120 W.

Compatibility with Platforms:

- Supports PCIe 3.0 x16;

- Works with Windows 11 2024 Update and Linux (NVIDIA drivers 550.x).

Drivers:

- Official support from NVIDIA ceased in 2024;

- Enthusiast community releases unofficial patches for running new games.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price of laptops with this card ($500–600);

- Energy efficiency;

- Stability of drivers.

Cons:

- No support for RTX/DLSS;

- 4 GB VRAM insufficient for modern AAA games;

- Outdated interfaces (HDMI 2.0, no USB-C).

Final Conclusion: Who Is the GTX 1050 Ti Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget gamers who are willing to play on low settings for projects released before 2023.

2. Students and office users who need a laptop with discrete graphics for Photoshop work or simple video editing.

3. Owners of older devices who do not plan to upgrade in the next 1–2 years.

Alternatives for 2025: Consider laptops with Intel Arc A580M or AMD Radeon 7600S — they are more expensive ($700–800) but offer twice the performance.

If you find a laptop with the GTX 1050 Ti Mobile priced under $500 and do not plan to run "new releases" — it is a reasonable compromise. In other cases, it is better to invest in more modern solutions.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2017

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile

Generation

GeForce 10 Mobile

Base Clock

1493MHz

Boost Clock

1620MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

3,300 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

Samsung

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1752MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

112.1 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

51.84 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

77.76 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

38.88 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

77.76 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

2.538 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

768

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

75W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

6.1

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.538 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

2296

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon R9 370X

2.69 +6%

GeForce GTX 660 Ti

2.581 +1.7%

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile

2.538

GeForce GTX 960 OEM

2.509 -1.1%

Radeon R7 265X OEM

2.415 -4.8%

3DMark Time Spy

Arc A550M

5182 +125.7%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

3906 +70.1%

Radeon 780M

2755 +20%

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile

2296

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

623 -72.9%