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 ESTThe Test
While the GeForce GTX 1650 is rolling out as a fully custom launch, the nature of the entry-level segment means that boards will be very similar across the board. For one, going beyond 75W TDP would require an external PCIe power connector. So the 75W ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1650 with boost clocks dialed 30MHz down to reference is a good approximation for a generic reference GTX 1650, allowing us to keep testing and analysis as apples-to-apples as possible. While not perfect, this should be reasonably accurate for a virtual reference card as we look at reference-to-reference comparisons.
Overall, as this primarily covers cards in the low- to mid-range, all game benchmarking is done at 1080p, looking at performance on our standard 1080p Ultra settings, as well as high and medium options that are better suited for these sorts of sub-$150 cards.
| Test Setup | |||||
| CPU | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz | ||||
| Motherboard | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 (F9g) | ||||
| PSU | Corsair AX860i | ||||
| Storage | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) | ||||
| Memory | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
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| Case | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition | ||||
| Monitor | LG 27UD68P-B | ||||
| Video Cards | ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1650 OC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB) AMD Radeon RX 570 8GB AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB AMD Radeon RX 460 4GB (14 CU) AMD Radeon RX 370 (2 GB) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Founders Edition (1260 cores) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB (1152 cores) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (2GB) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti |
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| Video Drivers | NVIDIA Release 430.39 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.4.3 |
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| OS | Windows 10 x64 Pro (1803) Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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Driver-wise, in addition to not being made available before launch, the 430.39 release was not the smoothest either, with a 430.59 hotfix coming out just this week to resolve bugs and performance issues. In our testing, we did observe some flickering in Ashes.
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Znaak - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
The RX570 won't even draw that much power if you know how to undervolt it. Both cards I've used in builds undervolted without a decrease in performance. Same for my RX580, undervolted it without a loss of performance.timecop1818 - Sunday, May 5, 2019 - link
Why does this shit still have a fucking DVI connector. Great card and I would totally buy it but I've got only DisplayPort monitors and guess what, this dumb piece of shit wastes half the bracket for a connector that has been dead for the last DECADE. Seriously who the fuck has a monitor with DVI? Last I saw this was on some Lenovo biz monitor that was still 4:3!WTB: GTX1650 with 2x DP, 1x USB-C and 0x or 1x HDMI
mm0zct - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
I for one still have a high-resolution DVI monitor. I've got no good reason to replace my Dell U2711, it's 2560x1440 and can only be driven at that resolution by Displayport or Dual-link DVI. Since I have multiple systems, and there are two DVI inputs and only one displayport, it's useful if I can connect to it via DVI still. Displayport to dual-link DVI adapters are still ludicrously expensive, so they aren't an option. Since DVI is easilly passively adapted to HDMI it's not useless even if you don't want DVI, but you can't passivle adapt HDMI or DisplayPort to dual-link DVI. Around the time I got htis monitor there were also a few quite populat 2560x1440 options which were DVI only, with no displayport, so it's good that this card would still support them.PeachNCream - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
I do agree that DVI is a dead animal. DisplayPort is following suit though as the industry settles into HDMI so I think that's where we'll end up in a few years.Korguz - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
timecop1818 and PeachNCream ...you 2 are complaining about DVI being on a video card in 2019, and saying its a dead animal ?? what about putting VGA ports on a NEW monitor in 2019 ? when was the last time a vga port was on a new video card ??? IMO.. DVI is a lot more useful then VGA, and instead of VGA on a monitor.. add another hdmi, or display port... along with a single DVI port. timecop1818 vga has been dead for longer... and FYI.. all my monitors have DVI, and are in use :-) if the last monitor you saw was a 4:3 lenovo.. then you havent bought a new one.. or havent looked at a new monitor for a while...
Xyler94 - Thursday, May 9, 2019 - link
to be fair on the VGA front, you'd be very hard pressed to find a server with anything but a VGA port.Only consumer/gaming products aren't using VGA.
Calista - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
DVI is far more common than DP. Far more common than HDMI on monitors. Besides, if looking at the offerings from Zotac and other they often have very similar cards with different output options. So you're free to pick the one you like.Znaak - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
There have been premium GTX 1650's announced with prices higher than stock RX580's!Sure the AMD card uses a lot of power, but performance wise it trounces the nVidia card.
System builders will like this card simply for being fully slot powered, everyone consumer building a system is better of going for AMD. Better performace, better price and if you get the 8GB version more future proof for even low end gaming.
sonny73n - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
Every time there a review of Nvidia gpu, AMD fans came crawling out of the woodwork. Just to set the record straight - I’m not an Nvidia fan nor AMD fan. While I agree with all of the commenters here about Nvidia pricing that this card should be around $120, I do not agree with most people’s perceptions of performance. You can talk about performance per dollar all day long but people like me sees efficiency as better in a whole. I don’t have this card or the RX 560 to compare but I do have a Zotac GTX 1060 GDDR5X 6GB (5 stars ratings) bought for $200 from Newegg last month and I have access to RX 590 8GB which is currently priced at $220 (the cheapest). I was going for the 590 but there were several reasons that held me back. First, all the cheap 590s (less than $250) had terrible reviews (mostly 3 out of 5 stars). Second, I don’t want a loud foot heater. Last but not least, I define performance based on efficiency. The RX 590 uses almost twice the power of the GTX 1060 but only is 17% faster. How can you call that a better performance? Obviously, AMD haven’t got their acts together. They need to come up with a better chip architecture and revamp everything. I had hopes for them but they fell me every time. Words from Lisa’s mouth are cheap. Until AMD can actually deliver, Nvidia will keep selling their gpus at whatever price they want.silverblue - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
I'm running The Division 2 on a marginally under-volted Nitro+ 590, and with a mixture of Ultra and some High settings at 1080p with a manually imposed frame cap of 75, I'm getting 60-75fps for a power consumption figure of 130-160W. The card is audible, but barely.It's just the one title, but I really doubt that the 1060 can deliver anywhere close to that level of performance, and certainly not at about half the power.