Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB Review: This Turing Fails the Test — Tom’s Hardware
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Tom’s Hardware Verdict
GeForce GTX 1650 has potential. It needs to be less expensive, for starters. We also want to see a card that gets all of its power from the PCIe slot. For the time being, AMD’s Radeon RX 570 8GB is faster, less expensive, and better able to handle games with big memory requirements.
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Pros
- +
Some versions do not require auxiliary power
- +
Great performance per watt
Cons
- —
Expensive relative to Radeon RX 570
- —
Some versions do require auxiliary power
- —
Not quite capable of smooth performance at max-quality 1080p
- —
Missing newest-generation NVENC encoder hardware
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB Review
AMD’s Radeon RX 570 launched almost exactly two years ago. Back then, nobody could have anticipated that the card, based on an even older Ellesmere GPU, would score a fresh win in 2019. But here we are, benchmarking Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 1650 4GB against the Radeon RX 570 8GB and finding AMD’s board to be not only faster, but in some cases less expensive as well.
Surely, Nvidia has some advantage in this competition. Right?
Well, the GeForce GTX 1650 and its TU117 processor are technically rated for 75W of power consumption, putting them in that rare category of gaming graphics cards capable of pulling all the current they need from a PCI Express slot. Except the sample we’re testing has a six-pin auxiliary connector along its top edge. And if you don’t use it, “PLEASE POWER DOWN AND CONNECT THE PCIe POWER CABLE(S) FOR THIS GRAPHICS CARD” appears as soon as you boot up.
Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom for the GeForce GTX 1650. We were able to confirm the existence of multiple models that don’t require external power. Even those that do should use about half the power of AMD’s Radeon RX 570 under load, making them immensely more efficient. How does Nvidia achieve such an advantage? It’s all in the Turing architecture…
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4G (4GB) at Amazon for $219.49
TU117: A New GPU With Familiar Tricks
The GPU at the heart of GeForce GTX 1650 is called TU117-300-A1, and it’s trimmed down even more than GeForce GTX 1660’s TU116 processor.
Not surprisingly, TU117 is quite a bit smaller than TU116: it comprises 4.7 billion transistors in a 200 mm² die. The chip is still manufactured using TSMC’s 12nm FinFET process and naturally lacks the RT and Tensor cores so commonly associated with Turing.
Some of the architecture’s other features do rub off on TU117, though. Like the higher-end GeForce RTX 20-series cards, GeForce GTX 1650 supports simultaneous execution of FP32 arithmetic instructions, which constitute most shader workloads, and INT32 operations (for addressing/fetching data, floating-point min/max, compare, etc.).
Turing’s Streaming Multiprocessors are composed of fewer CUDA cores than Pascal’s, but the design compensates in part by spreading more SMs across each GPU. The newer architecture assigns one scheduler to each set of 16 CUDA cores (2x Pascal), along with one dispatch unit per 16 CUDA cores (same as Pascal). Four of those 16-core groupings comprise the SM, along with 96KB of cache that can be configured as 64KB L1/32KB shared memory or vice versa, and four texture units.
Because Turing doubles up on schedulers, it only needs to issue an instruction to the CUDA cores every other clock cycle to keep them full. In between, it’s free to issue a different instruction to any other unit, including the INT32 cores.
In TU117, Nvidia replaces Turing’s Tensor cores with 128 dedicated FP16 cores per SM, which allow GeForce GTX 1650 to process half-precision operations at 2x the rate of FP32. TU106, TU104, and TU102 boast double-rate FP16 as well through their Tensor cores, so TU117’s configuration serves to maintain that standard through hardware put in place specifically for this GPU. The following chart is an updated version of the one published in our GeForce GTX 1660 review, which illustrates TU117’s massive improvement to half-precision throughput compared to GeForce GTX 1060 and its Pascal-based GP106 chip.
In addition to the Turing architecture’s shaders and unified cache, TU117 also supports a pair of algorithms called Content Adaptive Shading and Motion Adaptive Shading, together referred to as Variable Rate Shading.
We covered this technology in Nvidia’s Turing Architecture Explored: Inside the GeForce RTX 2080. That story also introduced Turing’s accelerated video encode capabilities, which carried over to GeForce GTX 1660, but did not make it into GeForce GTX 1650. Check out the following screen capture from Nvidia’s website, referring to the 1650’s NVENC engine as Volta-equivalent, making it similar to Pascal.
That means support for H.265 8K encode at 30 FPS is gone, along with the 25% bitrate savings for HEVC and up to 15% bitrate savings for H.264 that Nvidia touted when Turing launched.
Putting It All Together…
Whereas GeForce GTX 1660 is armed with 22 Streaming Multiprocessors, the 1650 features just 14 SMs spread across two Graphics Processing Clusters. One GPC hosts four Texture Processing Clusters and the other has three. With 64 FP32 cores per SM, we end up with 896 active CUDA cores and 56 usable texture units.
Board partners will undoubtedly target a range of frequencies to differentiate their cards.
However, the official base clock rate is 1,485 MHz with a GPU Boost specification of 1,665 MHz. Both of those numbers trail GeForce GTX 1660’s clocks, so in addition to losing on-die resources, GeForce GTX 1650 operates at lower frequencies, too.
Since Gigabyte doesn’t seem entirely content with those specs, we’re testing a GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4G with its GPU Boost clock set to 1,815 MHz. The card had no trouble maintaining a range between 1,890 and 1,920 MHz through three runs of Metro: Last Light.
Four 32-bit memory controllers give TU117 an aggregate 128-bit bus, which is populated by 8 Gb/s GDDR5 modules pushing up to 128 GB/s. That’s a mere 12.5% improvement over GeForce GTX 1050/1050 Ti.
Each memory controller is associated with eight ROPs and a 256KB slice of L2 cache, totaling 32 ROPs and 1MB of L2 across TU117. Similar to TU116, this chip’s L2 cache slices are half as large compared to TU106.
All of the cutting is good for a 45W reduction in power consumption compared to GeForce GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti.
By hitting the magic 75W threshold, Nvidia can claim that GeForce GTX 1650 doesn’t need an auxiliary power connector. But pay close attention as you shop—some implementations lack a six-pin connector, while others (like ours) require one. If your card needs external power, attaching that connector won’t be optional.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GeForce GTX 1650 | GeForce GTX 1660 | GeForce GTX 1660 Ti | GeForce GTX 1060 FE |
| Architecture (GPU) | Turing (TU117) | Turing (TU116) | Turing (TU116) | Pascal (GP106) |
| CUDA Cores | 896 | 1408 | 1536 | 1280 |
| Peak FP32 Compute | 3 TFLOPS | 5 TFLOPS | 5. 4 TFLOPS |
4.4 TFLOPS |
| Tensor Cores | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| RT Cores | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Texture Units | 56 | 88 | 96 | 80 |
| Base Clock Rate | 1485 MHz | 1530 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1506 MHz |
| GPU Boost Rate | 1665 MHz | 1785 MHz | 1770 MHz | 1708 MHz |
| Memory Capacity | 4GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 128 GB/s | 192 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 192 GB/s |
| ROPs | 32 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
| L2 Cache | 1MB | 1. 5MB |
1.5MB | 1.5MB |
| TDP | 75W | 120W | 120W | 120W |
| Transistor Count | 4.7 billion | 6.6 billion | 6.6 billion | 4.4 billion |
| Die Size | 200 mm² | 284 mm² | 284 mm² | 200 mm² |
| SLI Support | No | No | No | No |
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table
MORE: How to Stress-Test Graphics Cards (Like We Do)
MORE: All Graphics Content
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Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom’s Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
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MSI GTX 1650 SUPER Gaming X Review
Peter Donnell / 3 years ago
|
1. Introduction2. A Closer Look3. How We Test4. Synthetic Benchmarks5. Shadow of the Tomb Raider6. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided7. Ghost Recon: Wildlands8. Battlefield V9. Metro Exodus10. Far Cry New Dawn11. The Division 212. Borderlands 313. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint14. Power, Temperatures and Acoustics15. Overclocking16. Final Thoughts17. View All Pages |
Next Page » |
Earlier this year, we reviewed the new budget gaming cards from Nvidia. The GTX 1650 was mighty impressive for the size, power efficiency and cost, and you can check out those reviews below. However, Nvidia thinks they can beat themselves at their own game with the GTX 1650 SUPER.
A tuned up, refined and apparently much faster take on their budget gaming card.
- ASUS RoG STRIX GTX 1650 OC Edition Graphics Card Review
- Palit GTX 1650 StormX OC Graphics Card Review
- MSI Gaming X GTX 1650 Graphics Card Review
- ASUS GTX 1650 Phoenix Graphics Card Review
- Gigabyte GTX 1650 Gaming OC Graphics Card Review
MSI GTX 1650 SUPER Gaming X
Seven months ago we put the MSI Gaming X GTX 1650 through its paces. It’s a great little card that looks just as sexy as its more expensive counterparts. However, both Nvidia and MSI think they can beat that. The new GTX 1650 SUPER Gaming X is tuned up and promises much more performance for a very reasonable price. Will it take down even the GTX 1660 or even the current offerings from AMD, or even the past offerings from AMD? Let’s find out!
Features
- Turing architecture
- 1530MHz Base Clock & 1725 MHz Boost Clock Reference
- 4 GB GDDR6
- 12 Gbps memory
- 128-bit bus
- Nvidia NVENC Encoder
Specifications
For in-depth specifications, please visit the official product page here.
Turing Architecture
“Featuring concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations, adaptive shading technology, and a new unified memory architecture with twice the cache of its predecessor, Turing shaders enable awesome performance increases on today’s games. Get 1.4X power efficiency over previous generation for a faster, cooler, and quieter gaming experience.” – Nvidia
|
1. Introduction2. A Closer Look3. How We Test4. Synthetic Benchmarks5. Shadow of the Tomb Raider6. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided7. Ghost Recon: Wildlands8. Battlefield V9. Metro Exodus10. Far Cry New Dawn11. The Division 212. Borderlands 313. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint14. Power, Temperatures and Acoustics15. Overclocking16. Final Thoughts17. View All Pages |
Next Page » |
Topics: geforce, gpu, graphics card, GTX 1650, gtx 1650 super, msi, nvidia, review, super
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Review and test MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G
Despite the extremely low power consumption of the GeForce GTX 1650, many vendors released the most budget versions of it rather noisy, but today we will look at the MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G, which, even if it costs more , but will more than justify the overpayment with quiet operation and workmanship.
Packing and Contents
The MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G comes in a sturdy cardboard box with colorful graphics. On the front side there is an image of the video card, its name, as well as the name of some supported technologies. On the back of the box, the main technical features of the video card, as well as its characteristics, are clearly shown.
The package does not include anything special, only instructions and information booklets.
Features of MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G
MSI, as for me, is attractive. The dimensions of the video card as for the GeForce GTX 1650 are quite large 245 x 127 x 39mm. In general, a significant part of the attractiveness lies precisely in the plastic casing and two TORX 3.0 fans.
Unlike older video cards, there is no metal or plastic backplate, which is a pity, although the number of soldered components on this side is minimal.
For monitor connections there is one HDMI 2.
0b and two DisplayPort 1.4, I think it would be nice to have another HDMI.
On the side of the plastic casing there is an insert with the name of the cooling system, which is highlighted in white, the inscription GeForce GTX, as well as a 6-pin connector for connecting power.
Disassembling the video card is extremely simple, you just need to unscrew the four screws, disconnect the four connectors and separate the two halves of the video card.
And finally, we can take a closer look at the Twin Frozr 7 cooling system of the most budget video card based on the Turing architecture.
The plastic cover can be removed without any problems by unscrewing the four screws.
The radiator is blown by two TORX 3.0 fans marked PLD09210S12HH with an actual impeller diameter of 86 mm. These TORX 3.0 fans feature two types of blades used on the same impeller to optimize airflow and strike a balance between static pressure, quiet operation and efficiency.
The heatsink is single-section and, as for the GeForce GTX 1650, its workmanship can be called enviably high.
To increase efficiency, the heatsink is pierced twice with a single heat pipe, which is in direct contact with the graphics chip. Heat from the memory chips is also removed to the heatsink, and the power supply system is cooled only by blowing air, in other words, this is enough for this video card.
The video card is powered by a single 6-pin connector, which was required for additional overclocking, because without additional power, power consumption would be limited to 75 watts. A GPU marked TU117-300-A1 is used, three power phases are provided for its power supply, and one more phase is additionally implemented for memory chips. The memory array is based on four Micron 8KB77 D9 chipsGHz, just in case.
Full HD 1920×1080
In the tests, you can see that the performance gap with the GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB is noticeably reduced in new games, while in older games the performance of the «old woman» is noticeably higher. Of course, one might think that this is a conspiracy theory, but in fact, the reason is that the Turing architecture involves more blocks for half-precision calculations, and such calculations are increasingly used in actual games.
In general, gaming tests tell us that the GeForce GTX 1650 is more of a solution for multiplayer games, but in order to comfortably play current AAA projects at maximum graphics quality, you should look at at least the GeForce GTX 1660.
Thermal
Of course, the MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G is equipped with a passive fan mode, which allows you to enjoy complete silence until the graphics chip reaches 62°C, otherwise it only warms up in work tasks or games.
Also, the MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G feature is that it is well overclocked from the factory, and also has an extended power limit, which is 100W.
In nominal mode, at a room temperature of about 27°C, the video card in FurMark warms up to 66°C, and the fan speed is up to 1460 rpm. GPU frequency rises to 1937 MHz, but on average it stays at 1920 MHz.
Conclusions
Among the entire line of video cards based on the Turing architecture, the GeForce GTX 1650 is perhaps in the most disadvantageous position and there are many reasons for this, if only because there are, albeit “hot”, but more productive competitors, as well as because in the secondary market you can find a lot of profitable offers for video cards based on the Pascal architecture.
Well, among the advantages of the GeForce GTX 1650 one can not help but point out low power consumption, and therefore heat dissipation, which can be important in building a system. In general, the GeForce GTX 1650 can be a great solution for this. to play multiplayer games in FullHD resolution.
Well, if you take the GeForce GTX 1650, then you should definitely take a closer look at the MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G, since the video card turned out to be extremely successful. Quiet cooling system, good component base, nice appearance and low price — all this is about MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G. Perhaps what a user who decides to buy this video card may not like is the lack of RGB backlighting.
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G Wins Editor’s Choice Award in Testing!
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING (D6, D6 X, X)
Computers
Author Dmitry Petrov Reading 4 min Views 63
Updated
Hello! Today on review is a video card from MSI, the GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING model in versions D6, D6 X and X.
Content
- performance
- Construction and appearance
- Software
- Reviews
Production
9000 9000 9000
Versions D6 and D6 X have GDDR6 RAM, version X has GDDR5.
The weakest core frequency is the D6 version with 1620 MHz, the D6 X core is overclocked to 1710 MHz, and in the X version it is up to 1860 MHz. All three cards have on board 4 GB of RAM with a bus of 128 bits and 896 CUDA cores.
With parallel integer and floating point operations, adaptive shading technology, and a new unified cache architecture with twice the amount of cache (compared to the previous architecture), Turing shaders provide excellent performance in today’s games.
Design and appearance0003
| GTX 1650 GAMING D6 | GTX 1650 GAMING D6 X | GTX 1650 GAMING X | |
| Height | 13 cm | 13 cm | 13 cm |
| Length | 25 cm | 25 cm | 25 cm |
| Width | 2 slots | 2 slots | 2 slots |
| DisplayPort | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| HDMI | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Power supply | 6 pin | 6 pin | 6 pin |
Externally, the versions of this card are indistinguishable from each other.
Length 25 cm, height 13 cm, require 2 slots for installation. The video outputs are two DisplayPort and one HDMI. The cards have an additional power supply of 6 pins. The recommended power supply is 300W.
Powerful 7th generation Twin Frozr cooling system with innovative Torx 3.0 fans ensures stable and quiet operation of the graphics card due to low temperatures. The latest version of TORX fans raises the efficiency bar even higher. Traditional vanes with a redesigned impeller focus the airflow, which is then directed downwards by dispersion vanes that generate increased static pressure. Dispersive fan blades have a steeper profile to help accelerate airflow for greater cooling efficiency, while traditional fan blades create a constant airflow and direct it to the massive heatsink. Under low loads, the cooling fans stop completely to keep the graphics card quiet. If the load increases and the temperature starts to rise, the fans will automatically resume their work.
Radiator of the cooling system is aerodynamically optimized.
Airflow Control technology directs airflow directly onto the heatpipe, while allowing more heat to dissipate before exiting the heatsink due to the increased surface area.
The copper heatpipe runs through a massive heat sink made up of many aluminum fins, distributing heat along its entire length. For the greatest effect, they are located as close to each other as possible at the base of the heatsink, in the area of contact with the GPU.
Every detail counts when designing the perfect cooling system, which is why the graphics card’s cooling system uses high-quality thermal paste to provide an efficient and durable thermal interface.
The most important thing is hidden under the metal radiators — the printed circuit board, on which all the components of the video card are placed. The optimized wiring of the electronic connections between them allows them to exchange data at maximum speed. With the use of selected components and original PCB layout, the graphics card is characterized by increased stability at high frequencies and extended service life.
Software
- GeForce Experience . Stream games, take videos and screenshots and share them with your friends. Keep your GeForce drivers up to date. And optimize your game settings. The GeForce Experience app lets you do it all with ease. This is a very useful addition to your GeForce graphics card.
- Over time, the Dragon Center will become the only MSI application you need to install in order to access all the functionality of computers, graphics cards, motherboards, and even MSI gaming accessories. It will automatically identify the MSI devices added to the system and suggest the appropriate drivers. Try the Dragon Center beta app and share your experience with us!
- MSI Afterburner is the most famous and widely used graphics card overclocking utility. It provides full control over the device and allows you to monitor all key system parameters in real time.
