The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Review, Feat. Zotac: Fighting Brute Force With Power Efficiency
by Ryan Smith & Nate Oh on May 3, 2019 10:15 AM ESTWolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Vulkan)
id Software is popularly known for a few games involving shooting stuff until it dies, just with different 'stuff' for each one: Nazis, demons, or other players while scorning the laws of physics. Wolfenstein II is the latest of the first, the sequel of a modern reboot series developed by MachineGames and built on id Tech 6. While the tone is significantly less pulpy nowadays, the game is still a frenetic FPS at heart, succeeding DOOM as a modern Vulkan flagship title and arriving as a pure Vullkan implementation rather than the originally OpenGL DOOM.
Featuring a Nazi-occupied America of 1961, Wolfenstein II is lushly designed yet not oppressively intensive on the hardware, something that goes well with its pace of action that emerge suddenly from a level design flush with alternate historical details.
The game has 5 total graphical presets: Mein leben!, Uber, Ultra, Medium, and Low. Staying consistent with previous 1080p testing, the highest quality preset, "Mein leben!", was used, in addition to Ultra and Medium. Wolfenstein II also features Vega-centric GPU Culling and Rapid Packed Math, as well as Radeon-centric Deferred Rendering; in accordance with the presets, neither GPU Culling nor Deferred Rendering was enabled.
To preface, an odd performance bug afflicted the two Maxwell cards (GTX 960 and GTX 950), where Medium Image Streaming (poolsize of 768) resulted in out-of-memory sub 2-fps performance. Using the Medium preset but with any other Image Streaming setting returned to normal performance, suggesting an issue with memory allocation, and occuring on earlier drivers as well. It's not clear how much this affects sub 2-fps performance at the "Mein leben!" preset, which is already much too demanding for 2GB of framebuffer.
With the VRAM-hungry nature of Wolfenstein II, the GTX 1650's 4GB keeps it from suffering a premature death like all the other 2GB cards. Or even the 3GB card, in the case of the GTX 1060 3GB. Even at medium settings, the bigger framebuffer turns the tables on the GTX 1060 3GB, which is faster in every other game in the suite. So the GTX 1650 takes the lead in both performance and smoother gameplay experience.
The VRAM-centric approach does uncover more oddities; here the GTX 1650 overcomes the RX 570 4GB at higher settings, but the RX 570 8GB remains undeterred.
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schujj07 - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
Pricing is even better right now for the RX570. The 4GB starts at $130 and the 8GB starts at $140, whereas the cheapest GTX 1650 is $150. Unless you need a sub 75W GPU, there is no reason at all to buy the 1650, not when you can get 10-20% better performance for $10-20 less cost.Death666Angel - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
Seems like it. Although I do know some people that run Dell/HP refurbs from years ago (Core i5-750 or i7-860, maybe a Sandybridge if they are lucky) and need the 75W graphics card. They all have GTX 750 still. This may be a card to replace that, since the rest still serves them fine.Otherwise, this is really kinda disappointing.
I still rock a GTX 960 2GB (from my HTPC, it has to be small), since I sold my 1080 when I saw that I played only a few hours each month. But I won't be upgrading to this. I'd rather get a 580 8GB or save more and get a 2060 that can last me for several years. Oh well, guess someone will buy it. And it'll end up in tons of off-the-shelf PCs.
SaturnusDK - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
They don't need a 75W graphics card on an old refurb PC. What they desperately need is to replace the PSU with a modern 80+ certified one. The PSU in those old OEM PCs is typically 220W-280W ones with 75% maximum efficiency. And probably not over 70% with a 75W graphics card. Anandtech have tests of old OEM PSUs that shows that.Replacing the PSU to a reasonably low cost modern 80+ one gets you at least 50% more power capacity, and they will generally be at or near 90% efficient in the 40-50% load sweet spot which they will be at in gaming with an RX570 for instance.
So they can get a new PSU and an RX570 for the same price. Have at least 15% better performance, have a quieter and a more power efficient system for the same price as if they bought a 1650.
At $150 literally no one should even consider buying this. If the price was in the $100-$110 it would be another matter. Maybe even ok at $120. But at $150 it makes no sense for anyone to buy.
PeachNCream - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
The "with compromises" bit could also mean setting the resolution to 1600x900. Power and temps are okay for the performance offered. The typical Nvidia ego-induced, absent-competition Turing price premium isn't as terrible at the low end. However a ~30W replacement for the 1030 would be nice as it would likely fit on a half-height, single slot card.Flunk - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
The name of this card is pretty confusing. GTX 1650 being noticeably slower than a GTX 1060 despite being 590 numbers higher doesn't make much sense. Why didn't Nvidia keep their naming to one scheme (2000 series) instead of having the GTX 16XX cards with confusing names.serpretetsky - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
last two digits are the performance category, the more significant digits are the generation. It is strange that right now they basically have two generation numbers 1600 and 2000. But that 50 is slower than 60 is not too confusing (for me anyways). Different performance category.Death666Angel - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
That makes no sense. The 2060 is slower than the 1080 Ti, but it is 980 "numbers higher". A Core i3-8100 is slower than an i5 or i7 of an earlier generation (being some 500 to thousands of "numbers" higher).Don't get me wrong, Nvidia's naming scheme sucks. But not because of the reason you stated.
guidryp - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
@DeathAngel. Not sure what your problem is. 80>70>60>50>30 etc...But that obviously only applies within a current generation. When you compare to an older generation then New x80 will be faster than old x80 and so on.
It's about as logical as you can make it.
serpretetsky - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
DeathAngel was replying to Flunk.sor - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
Of these low-mid cards, looks like the 1660 is where it's at. ~70% more cores and ~70% more performance for ~40% more money. I know, they need to have tiers, but as far as value goes it's the better bang for the buck if you can scrape together a bit more cash.