NVIDIA GTX 1050 specs, release date unconfirmed; Leaks say GPU will be for entry-level gaming

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Nvidia seems to be focusing on the higher end of the market with its recent Pascal-based GPUs, but with the release of the GTX 1060 last month, it changed its market as its price was able to get as low as $200. Now, the GTX 1050 has been reportedly leaked, and fans are curious as to what the 1050 can offer. However, with no official announcement from Nvidia, this is still considered to be a rumor until further notice.

Extreme Tech reports that this leaked part's specs is a 768:64:32 core, which includes the cores, texture units as well as ROPS. It seems that with this specs, it is significantly lower compared to the GTX 1060, which has 1280:80:48 at 6GB and 1152:72:48 at 3GB. Regardless, this new GPU will have a 128-bit memory path for 112GB/s of memory bandwidth together.

As such, comparing it with AMD's RX 470, the GTX 1050 seems to look very different, despite the former being rumored as its competition once it gets released. After all, it cannot hope to compete against the fourth-generation GCN with its 2048:128:32 configuration. Also, AMD's RX 470 has 211GB/s worth of memory bandwidth, which is also much stronger compered to the 1050 in theory. 

However, the Pascal architecture has always compensated for its seemingly weak specs with an extremely strong performance in real time. After all, the GTX 1060 can be comparable with the GTX 980 in terms of performance despite having much lesser memory bandwidth as well as fewer shader cores and texture units.

With this, Asia Starz says that there are rumors that the GTX 1050 will have two variations, with one having a 2GB worth of GDDR5 VRAM and another with 4GB. With these, the 1050 could be be used for entry-level gaming, but its low power requirement makes it an attractive choice.

The GeForce GTX 1050 is expected to be released in October with a $150 price tag.