14 DAY TRIAL // Among all the graphics cards that got launched over the past 24 hours, Colorful may just have the best one. Or at least the best among the many GeForce GTX 650 Ti graphics adapters.
In addition to NVIDIA's reference GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, quite a few custom-built versions have arrived this week.
There are, or will be, boards from Zotac, Inno3D, Gigabyte, Palit, Gainward and EVGA. Sales will start soon, if they haven't already.
Nevertheless, while those adapters, or some of them, have factory-overclocked GPUs and memory, as well as different coolers from the original, they aren't all that sophisticated in comparison.
That is where Colorful has an advantage: the iGame GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost not only has an elaborate cooler, but its specs can be changed.
The PCB (printed circuit board) has two distinct EEPROM chips, which means that there are two BIOSes on the video adapter.
One of them stores the reference settings: 980 MHz GPU base speed, 1,033 MHz GPU boost speed, 6 GHz VRAM speed (2 GB GDDR5).
The other chip, aptly dubbed “Turbo,” raises the GPU Boost frequency to 1,058 MHz, and allows for further overclocking.
One might call the “Turbo” chip the setting the card is supposed to run at, at the other EEPROM the failsafe.
Speaking of failsafe, Colorful tossed in a second 6-pin PCI Express power connector, to make sure no power insufficiencies happen.
As for the cooler, it is made of three aluminum fin stacks, five 8mm nickel-plated copper heatpipes, two 80mm fans and an aluminum backplates, since there are memory chips on both sides.
Finally, the Colorful iGame GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost has two dual-link DVI ports, one HDMI and one DisplayPort. The TDP (thermal design power) is 140W and the price should be of a bit above $169.99 / 169.99 Euro.
