Nvidia is readying to bring Pascal cores to the masses with the launch of the GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti. Both cards are based on a new GP107 graphics core that offers a significant performance per watt jump over previous products while priced at an affordable sub-$149 range.

Nvidia GTX 1050 Series Cards To be Built Using Samsung’s 14nm FF Process

The latest from the Nvidia rumor mill is that the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti will be the first Pascal GPUs to use Samsung’s 14nm FinFET LPP (Low Power Plus) manufacturing process. So far, all the Pascal designs released by the company are built on the 16nm FF process from TSMC. The move will bring Nvidia closer to AMD considering the latter is using the GlobalFoundries’ 14nm FF process on its Polaris GPUs.

According to a report from 3DCenter, the reason behind Nvidia’s opting for Samsung’s 14nm LPP process for production of their new GPU designs is because TSMC is currently having capacity issues and is unable to meet the high demand for their 16nm FinFET chip production. This will surely benefit Samsung whose foundries are much less busy than TSMC, and could produce the Pascal GP107 core.

Apart from this, some reports suggest that Samsung will also produce 16nm process node for Nvidia that the chipmaker could use for a “Pascal Refresh” in 2017. We know that the Pascal architecture has still got a lot of untapped potential, and Nvidia is looking to use this inside the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 successors to offer even higher clock speeds and further stability. Moreover, the company is planning to launch more chips based on the GP102 architecture.

GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti: Specs, Pricing & Release Dates

Back to the GTX 1050 series graphics cards, the Ti version sports a fully enabled GP107 GPU featuring 768 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs and 32 ROPs. The clock speeds are 1318 MHz base and 1380 MHz boost, with the texture fill rate up to 84 GTexel/s. The card has 4GB GDDR5 memory which is clocked at 7GHz on a 128-bit bus interface, giving a total bandwidth of 112GB/s.

Recently, the GTX 1050 Ti PCB shots leaked online. The photos show the GP107 core measuring just 150mm2 which is really small. From the looks of it, the board appears to be designed by Chinese graphics card manufacturer, Colorful. It packs a 3+1 Phase design and comes with a 6-pin power connector, although the card has a TDP of mere 75W which means it won’t require extra connectors for power.

The power connectors allow for more voltage to be drawn to the board components to ensure higher stable clock speeds. The card is rumored to reach overclocks around 1.5 to 1.6GHz.

On the other hand, the GTX 1050 features a cut-down GP107 GPU. With a few cores disabled, the card delivers lower clocks and in turn lower power consumption compared to the Ti variant. It has 2GB of base VRAM and would provide effective solution in the entry-level market. Like its bigger brother, the GTX 1050 will be offered in several custom variants.

Both GP107-based cards are expected to launch this month. According to Korean GPU rumour mongers, HWBattle, the GTX 1050 Ti would launch on October 18 at around $149 while the smaller GTX 1050 is planned for October 26 launch. This card will carry an expected price tag of $199.

In terms of performance, I hope the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti to deliver GTX 970 levels of gaming performance. Based on the rumored core configuration, the card should outperform the AMD RX 460, but sit fairly behind the GTX 1060 3GB version.