MAXSUN, as a sub-brand of Guangzhou Commerce Information Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2002 and has more than 10 years of brand history. With a brand philosophy of “focus on quality, focus on excellence”, MAXSUN has always been committed to providing users with excellent product solutions. Maxsun product line covers graphics cards, motherboards and SSD that includes JetStream series, Terminator series, Optimus Prime series, Transformers series, Power Hammer series etc. Maxsun is based in mainland China.
Today, I will be reviewing the entry-level budget gaming graphics card from the Maxsun i.e GTX 1050 2G. While this card is perfect for small form factor builds, it does not limit its use in any other form factor build. Don’t be drawn away from its compact size and smaller PCB for it does pack quite a punch for the gamers playing at 1080p and lower. It has a proper cooling solution in the form of the regular heatsink, heatpipes and an 85mm fan offering optimal cooling performance yet with silent operations. It draws just 75W of power and does not need any power connector for that.
This card has 640 Cuda Cores with 128-bit memory bus. It packs 2GB of GDDR5 video memory clocked at 7GHz. The base clock is 1354MHz with the boost clock of the 1455MHz. It follows the PCIe 3.0 standard. It has an HDMI 2.0b, a DP 1.4 and DL-DVI connectors. It is a dual slot design but still a compact size card. It has a support for 4.5 OpenGL and DX of 12 API feature level of 12_1. The card’s dimensions are just 193mm x 110mm x 33 mm if this tells you the tale of how compact it is.
Product: GTX 1050 2G
Manufacturer: Maxsun
Price: $145.90 [At the time of the review]
Specifications
Packing
This card is being directed at B2B channel and is sold in bulk hence it does not have official packaging like other retail channel cards carry. The card comes inside the antistatic container nicely placed inside a cardboard box with Styrofoam paddings around it. There is no accessory included with it. Though, the card can be bought from AliExpress. Click on the price link above to check their online store out.
Closer Look
Let’s dig deep into the design elements of this card and explore the might and the beauty of it. This card has the stylish cooler shroud. This shroud is made of plastic. This shroud has the black color tone to it which makes it stand out. There is an 85mm fan located in the middle of the shroud, pushing the fresh air right on top of the aluminum heatsink. The fan has 11 blades with raised lines on the top surface for directed air flow across the flow. The Maxsun brand logo is pasted on the motor hub of the fan. The shroud quality is a good one and it does not bend nor has a flex from any point. The shroud design clearly depicts the Transformers design.
Looking at the bottom side of the card, there is a two pin power connector going in the header located on the far bottom side. This is to power up the fan. A single aluminum based heatsink with the dimension 64mm x 88mm is visible in the middle. There are no heatpipes on the cooler. The heatsink is covering the GPU die and the VRAM area.
Let’s take a look at the card from the top side. The shroud is not covering near the PCB. There is a vent in the middle of it for better airflow to maximize the heat dissipation. The shroud extends beyond the PCB.
The IO shield has three connectivity options:
- HDMI 2.0b
- Display Port 1.4
- DL-DVI
The shroud extends towards the rear though mid-section makes contact with the IO shield while the far ends don’t fully cover the PCB.
On the front side of the shroud, there is a Transformers logo in the middle. The shroud is approximately extending by 35mm or so from the PCB. Though it may have little to no effect on the cooling, it does make the shroud design stand out to give the bold impression of their Transformer series. There is nothing on the underside of the extended shroud.
A look on the backside of the card would immediately show the compact size of the card and the PCB. There is a printed label on the bottom side of the PCB with the Serial No, the model no of the card. It is bar coded. There is no backplate on this card. The size of the PCB itself is 144mm x 110mm. PCB is in black color. One of the screws has a sticker pasted on top of it removing it will void the warranty.
I did not open the card to look for the power delivery system.
Test Bench
Following test bench setup was used to test the performance of the graphics card:
- Intel i7 6850k
- Asus Rampage V Edition 10
- Corsair Vengeance Red LED 4x8GB @ 2666MHz
- Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer C
- Corsair AX1200i
- Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD for OS
- Seagate Barracuda 2TB
- Asus VX24AH
Previously, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 and Gear of Wars 4 were the part of the test games. They have been dropped from this test and onwards. Metro Last Light Redux will continue to be featured as this game based on its rich environment and taxing effects on the graphics card are handy to measure the performance of any given graphics card. Following games have been tested: –
- Battlefield 1
- DOOM
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Metro Last Light Redux
- Ashes of the Singularity
- Mass Effect Andromeda
- Watch Dogs 2
The settings on which the games were tested are mentioned in the graphs. Microsoft Windows 10 x64 version 1703 was used. Nvidia graphics driver version 387.92 was used. FPS were monitored using MSI After Burner 4.4. Game settings were set from within the games, not from the GeForce Experience. All the reported framerates are average FPS.
Following synthetic benchmarks were used:
- 3D Mark
- Unigine Superposition
Previously Unigine Heaven and Valley were a part of our testing but they have been dropped and only superposition will be featured from onwards.
Let’s take a look at the performance graphs.
3D Mark
These are the graphics score only.
Unigine Superposition
The card sits nicely between the GTX 750Ti and the GTX 1050Ti
Grand Theft Auto – V
The card was tested with the High settings and 2x MSAA.
Battlefield 1
The card was tested in the Ultra settings.
DOOM
DOOM was tested using the High settings. The performance is right on the money for this entry level card.
Metro Last Light Redux
Metro Last Light Redux was tested on Very High graphics settings with AF 4X and SSAA off. Motion Blur and the tessellation were set to Normal.
Mass Effect Andromeda
Don’t get carried away that easily. The GTX 1050Ti was tested with the Ultra settings resulting in 41 FPS whereas the GTX 1050 was tested with the High settings resulting in 46.7 FPS. On Ultra settings, the FPS would have been lowered than those on the GTX 1050Ti.
Ashes of Singularity
The game was tested on High settings with 2x MSAA. This game is definitely too much for this card in these settings.
Watch Dogs 2
The game was tested in High settings. Medium settings will yield better FPS for this card.
Overclocking
The card boosted to 1772MHz out of the box. During my overclocking session with this card, it reached 1890MHz boost clock with +150MHz on the core clock and the +250MHz on the memory clock. Anything above was not stable. Please, note that the power limit on this card is 100%.
Here are the results of the synthetic benchmarks with overclocked graphics card:
3D Mark
Superposition
Thermals
Room temp was 18C at the time of the testing. In an open bench table, the maximum temperature hit by the graphics card was 60C. With overclocking, the max temperature was 62C. Mind you this temperature reading is taken after 15 minutes run of the Furmark and the CPU was also stressed test at the same time using AIDA64.
Acoustics
Fans were left on default fan curve. Foneso Digital Sound Level Meter version A0 was used to test the sound level. 38dB is heck impressive for the cooling that this card provides.
Power Consumption
The Corsair AX1200i is a digital PSU with monitoring enabled on the power consumption. Corsair Link was used to checking the power consumption under stock clocks and overclocked clocks. The Furmark and AIDA64 were run at the same time to check the power consumption of the system. Don’t be surprised if there is not much of a power consumption difference between the stock and overclocked as the power limit of this card is locked at 100%.
Conclusion
MAXSUN, as a sub-brand of Guangzhou Commerce Information Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2002 and has more than 10 years of brand history. With a brand philosophy of “focus on quality, focus on excellence”, MAXSUN has always been committed to providing users with excellent product solutions. Maxsun product line covers graphics cards, motherboards and SSD that includes JetStream series, Terminator series, Optimus Prime series, Transformers series, Power Hammer series etc. Maxsun is based in mainland China.
The Maxsun GTX 1050 2G is their first ever product on our test bench. It features the Nvidia 14nm GP-107-300-A1 chip having 640 Cuda Cores. The pixel fill rate is 43.3 GP/s whereas the texture fill rate is 54.2 GT/s. The memory capacity is 2GB based on GDDR5. Our variant has Samsung chips. The memory is clocked at 7GHz with 128-bit bus width. The card has 32 ROPs/40 TMUs.
This card has an 85mm fan fitted on a stylish black color shroud depicting the Transformers design. The fan has 11 blades. There is no heatpipe in the overall cooling solution which is understandable. There is a single aluminum based heatsink with the dimension 64mm x 88mm. of The card has an HDMI 2.0b port, a Display Port 1.4 and a DL-DVI port for display outputs.
Power requirement is just 75W hence it does not have and need any power input as 75W is provided by the motherboard on the PCI slot. The card is dual slot design and it is compact in size. The dimensions of the card are 193mm x 110mm x 33 mm. The card has no SLI support. It supports OpenGL 4.5 and Direct X 12 with API feature level of 12_2. It does support HDCP. The card does not have a backplate.
Value
This card is listed at the US $145.90 at the time of the review. At the moment, the single fan solutions in the category of the GTX 1050 on the NewEgg are ranging from $110 to $132, making this card’s price a tad higher.
Performance
The Maxsun GTX 1050 2G Edition is an entry-level, budget card. I have tested the card on the 1080p [Full HD] resolution at 60Hz. It cannot drive every game at Ultra settings on 1080p but by turning the graphics settings from Medium to the High one can easily play the games depending on the game.
With the highest compatibility out of the box, good thermals, excellent acoustics and better performance, the Maxsun GTX 1050 2G Edition has won our recommended award.
I am thankful to the Maxsun for giving me the opportunity to review their GeForce GTX 1050 2G Edition.
