Home / Tech News / Featured Tech Reviews / Gigabyte GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4G Review

Gigabyte GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4G Review

Rating: 6.0.

Targeting the 1080p gamer on a budget, Nvidia officially unveiled the GTX 1650 on Tuesday April 23. In an unusual move, though, drivers for the new card were not seeded to press ahead of launch – meaning it has been a frantic couple of days testing this new entry-level GPU. With prices starting at £138, is the GTX 1650 a good buy or are there better options available?

Following on from the GTX 1660 Ti and the GTX 1660, the new GTX 1650 is the third GPU released by Nvidia that is based on the Turing architecture but sports no RTX features. There isn't much to talk about in terms of architectural changes with the new GPU, either, only that it is based on the TU117 die which is just a scaled-down TU116.

The specific card we are looking at today is from Gigabyte, in the form of the GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4G. This is Gigabyte's flagship GTX 1650 card, and accordingly it does sport a price-premium over the £138 MSRP – it will set you back around £160 at the time of writing. Whether or not it can justify that price remains to be seen, particularly as RX 570 partner cards now start at around £125.

GPU RTX 2060 (FE)  GTX 1660 Ti GTX 1660 GTX 1650 GTX 1060
SMs 30 24 22 14 10
CUDA Cores  1920 1536 1408 896 1280
Tensor Cores  240 N/A N/A N/A N/A
Tensor FLOPS 51.6 N/A N/A N/A N/A
RT Cores 30 N/A N/A N/A N/A
Texture Units 120 96 88 56 80
ROPs 48 48 48 32 48
Rays Cast  5 Giga Rays/sec 0.44 Giga Rays/sec
RTX Performance  37 Trillion RTX-OPS N/A
GPU Boost Clock  1680 MHz 1770 MHz 1785 MHz 1665 MHz 1708 MHz
Memory Data Rate 14 Gbps 12 Gbps 8 Gbps 8 Gbps 8 Gbps
Total Video Memory 6GB GDDR6 6GB GDDR6 6GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5 6GB GDRR5
Memory Interface  192-bit 192-bit 192-bit 128-bit 192-bit
Memory Bandwidth 336.1 GB/sec 288.1 GB/sec 192.1 GB/sec 128 GB/sec 192 GB/sec
TDP 160W 120W 120W 75W 120W

As we mentioned, the TU117 GPU that GTX 1650 is based on, is effectively a scaled-down TU116 GPU. That means it uses the same Turing architecture with the same SM design that we have seen with both the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti. It is worth noting, however, that the desktop TU117 part – with 14 SMs and 896 CUDA cores – is not actually a full implementation of TU117. Instead, TU117 for laptops has an extra two SMs, giving that a total of 1024 CUDA cores.

We are concerned with the desktop part, however, so 896 cores is what we get. Reference spec has the boost clock for GTX 1650 at 1665MHz, though this Gigabyte model ups that considerably with a rated boost clock of 1815MHz. Do note, however, that clock speed will vary significantly card-to-card – some GTX 1650s have no supplemental power connectors and will likely run a little slower, but some require a 6-pin PCIe power connector and should run a little faster.

This card falls into the latter of those two camps, and Gigabyte actually rates this Gaming OC 4G card with a 105W TDP – which is a full 30W more than reference spec. It goes without saying that a slower-clocked card, without the additional 6-pin connector, is going to be drawing less power which explains why the reference specification states a 75W TDP.

Lastly, as for card memory, GTX 1650 is equipped with 4GB GDDR5 memory operating over a 128-bit bus. This gives total memory bandwidth of 128 GB/s. The memory is running at stock speeds on this Gaming OC 4G.

Become a Patron!

Check Also

MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi Review

MSI's MPG X870E Carbon WiFi is packed with features, including the headline USB4 ports and WiFi 7