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 ESTFar Cry 5 (DX11)
The latest title in Ubisoft's Far Cry series lands us right into the unwelcoming arms of an armed militant cult in Montana, one of the many middles-of-nowhere in the United States. With a charismatic and enigmatic adversary, gorgeous landscapes of the northwestern American flavor, and lots of violence, it is classic Far Cry fare. Graphically intensive in an open-world environment, the game mixes in action and exploration.
The Ultra, High, and Normal presets were used. Far Cry 5 does support Vega-centric features with Rapid Packed Math and Shader Intrinsics, these were left off for testing. Far Cry 5 also supports HDR (HDR10, scRGB, and FreeSync 2). This testing was done without HD Textures enabled, an option that was recently patched in.
For Far Cry 5, the GTX 1650 is again perched in the GTX 1060 3GB and GTX 1050 Ti performance gap, pulling away further from the GTX 1050 Ti at more intensive settings. The RX 570, while slower than the GTX 1060 3GB in this title, is still firmly ahead of the GTX 1650.
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Yojimbo - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link
That's true, and I noted that in my original post. But the important thing is that the price/performance comparison should consider the total cost of ownership of the card. Ultimately, the value of any particular increment in performance is a matter of personal preference, though it is possible for someone to make a poor choice because he doesn't understand the situation well.dmammar - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
This power consumption electricity savings debate has gone on too long. The math is not hard - the annual electricity cost is equal to (Watts / 1,000) x (hours used per day) x (365 days / year) x (cost per kWh)In my area, electricity costs $0.115/kWh so a rather excessive (for me) 3 hours of gaming every day of the year means that an extra 100W power consumption equals only $12.50 higher electricity cost every year.
So for me, the electricity cost of the higher power consumption isn't even remotely important. I think most people are in the same boat, but run the numbers yourself and make your own decision. The only people who should care either live somewhere with expensive electricity and/or game way too much, in which case they should probably be using a better GPU.
Yojimbo - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link
How is $12.50 a year not remotely important? Would you say a card costing $25 less is a big deal? If one costs $150 and the other is $175 you would not consider that to be at all a consideration to your purchase?OTG - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link
How IS $12.50/year even worth thinking about?That's less than an hour of work for most people, it's like 3 cents a day, you could pay for it by finding pennies on the sidewalk!
PLUS you get much better performance! It's a faster card for a completely meaningless power increase.
If your PSU doesn't have a six pin, get the 1650 I guess, otherwise the price is kinda silly.
Yojimbo - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link
I like the way you think. Whatever you buy, just buy it from me for $12.50 more than you could otherwise get it, because it's just not worth thinking about. What you say would be entirely reasonable if it didn't apply to every single purchase you make. I mean if a company comes along as says "Come on, buy this pen for $20. You're only going to buy one pen this year." would you do it? Do you ask the people who are saying NVIDIA's new cards are too expensive because they are $20 more expensive than the previous generation equivalents "How is $10 a year even worth thinking about?"Hey, if you are willing to throw money out the window if it is for electricity but not for anything else that's up to you, but you are making unreasonable decisions that harm yourself.
jardows2 - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
Using your logic, why don't we all just save bunches of money by using Intel Integrated graphics. Since the money we save on power usage is all that matters, we might as well make sure we are only using Mobile CPU's as well.What your paying for here is the improved gaming experience provided by the extra performance of the RX570. For many people, the real-world improvement in the gaming experience is worth the relatively low cost of energy usage. Realistically, the only reason to get one of these over the 570 is if your power supply cannot handle the RX570.
Sushisamurai - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
Holy crap man! The amount of electricity I spent to read this comment thread and that mount of keyboard clicks that've been consumed from my 70 million clicks from my mechanical keyboard from my total cost of ownership was totally worth reading and replying to this.OTG - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
If you're pinching pennies that hard, you're probably better off not spending 4 hours a day gaming.Those games cost money, and you know what they say about time!
Maybe even set the card mining when you're away, there are profits to be had even now.
WarlockOfOz - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link
Anyone calculating the total ownership cost of a video card in cents per day should also consider that the slightly higher performance of the 570 may allow it to last a few more months before justifying replacement, allowing the purchase price to be spread over a longer period.Yojimbo - Sunday, May 5, 2019 - link
"Anyone calculating the total ownership cost of a video card in cents per day should also consider that the slightly higher performance of the 570 may allow it to last a few more months before justifying replacement, allowing the purchase price to be spread over a longer period."Sure. Not that likely, though, because the difference isn't that great so what is more likely to affect the timing of upgrade is the card that becomes available. But at the moment, NVIDIA has a big gap between the 1650 and the 1660 so there aren't two more-efficient cards that bracket the 570 well from a price standpoint.
Of course, some people apparently don't care about $25 at all so I don't understand why they should care about $25 more than that (for a total of 50) such that it would prevent them from getting a 1660, which has a performance that blows the 570 out of the water and would be a lot more likely to play a factor in the timing of a future upgrade.