Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards pack a lot of graphics punch into a small power envelope. Not to be outdone by MSI, Gigabyte is now capitalizing on those cards' low thermal and power footprint by packing them into half-height PCIe cards. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 OC Low Profile 2G and GTX 1050 Ti OC Low Profile 4G cards can transform a pre-built desktop or SFF machine into a very capable gaming and media playback platform. The cards don't need a six-pin PCIe power connector, so owners of small systems should be able to plunk these cards in without a PSU upgrade.
Gigabyte's miniaturized GeForce GTX 1050 has a base clock of 1366 MHz and a boost clock of 1468 MHz—a handful of MHz faster than the GTX 1050 reference specifications. The mighty mite GTX 1050 Ti has a base clock of 1303 MHz and a boost clock of 1417 MHz, also just a bit faster than reference spec. Both cards have GDDR5 memory clocked at 7 GT/s. The GTX 1050 card has 2GB of onboard memory, while the Ti version doubles that capacity.
Both cards use the half-height form factor, but they still have dual-slot coolers. Each card has a pair of HDMI ports, a DiplayPort jack, and an old-school DVI-D connector. Physical measurements are 6.6" x 2.7" x 1.5" (or 16.7 cm x 6.9 cm x 3.7 cm), no matter which card buyers choose.
Gigabyte didn't offer pricing information for the GeForce GTX 1050 OC Low Profile 2G and GTX 1050 Ti OC Low Profile 4G, but these mini-me cards tend to go for few bucks more than their full-size equivalents. For reference, MSI's half-height GeForce GTX 1050 Ti card sells for $155 at Newegg, while that manufacturer's least expensive GeForce GTX 1050 Ti implementation goes for $150.