looking at getting a GTX 1050 but theres a fair few manufacturers of them

Are these all pretty much the same, or are some brands much better than others.

I was just thinking of the cheapest one which is made by KFA2, are they ok?

thanks

Some will come with better coolers and/or circuitry than others which means they can overclock them slightly to boost performance by a modest amount (as you may already know) . They better coolers may also run more quietly, but I doubt a 1050 would put out too much noise anyhow.

how desperate are you for a card? They are at  the highest price they have ever been since production. what have you atm?

I’d try to go 2nd hand if i were you.  As mentioned above, all the crypto mining has increased the cost of cards ridiculously.  For example I could sell mine for more now than i bought it for new last year.

Cheaper models will often run hot and have less efficient cooling systems.  You could try find a 2nd hand  MSI 1050ti from some of the facebook pc groups.

I don’t think there’s much between brands. I’ve installed a few of those in the last couple of weeks (one this morning actually) and they’re excellent for the money.

There’s a couple of specs though, for the modest extra cost you want the 4GB not the 2GB and Ti (not sure they make a non-ti 1050).

Sometimes’s it’s worth looking s/h a 760 or 960 might outperform the 1050, Benchmark will help you decide.

not in a massive rush to get one, only really want it to make Zift and another trainer video program run without juddering as much. All i’ve got at the moment is the built in HD4600 intel graphics.  Might hang on and see what happens over the summer to prices.  Price at moment on amazon is £113 for a KFA2 GTX 1050, or £106 for an open box one from amazon warehouse. Dont realy know a lot about graphics cards so not sure if thats good or bad!

Recommended spec for Zwift is only a 650 so no need to go wild.

What sort of PC do you have? the xx50 cards usually don’t need a power supply, but if you’re using a off-the-shelf desktop the PSU might not be enough to run it properly.

There’s loads of cheap cards about though that more than meet Zwifts min spec if that’s all you want to do.

PC is just a refurbished Dell desktop so probably hasnt got a mega power supply in it. The 1050 only needs 75W though and i’ve read it can be used from a 250W supply as long as you arent really pushing the whoe PC really hard, which hopefully Zwift shouldnt do?

Are there any cheaper low power cards?

Something like this:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-gigabyte-geforce-gt-730-silent-single-slot-pcie-20-(x16)-1800mhz-gddr3-gpu-902mhz-384-cores-lp-h

Don’t get me wrong, for a gaming card its fairly crap – but I have the same one in my ancient work pc (8GB RAM, 2nd Gen i5) and it’ll run Fortnite if you don’t mind slightly blocky graphics. Zwift only requires a GPU with 1GB of RAM, this has double that and isn’t obsolete so they’re still pushing out drivers for it.

It’s used almost no power, doesn’t even have a fan so it’s silent and it costs buttons.