Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G and GTX 1660 OC 6G Review

Nvidia is promising high-quality full-HD gaming for those on tight budgets who haven`t upgraded their graphics cards in a few years.  

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 and GeForce GTX 1660 promise full-HD gaming on a budget
As is standard practice, Nvidia started rolling out its current generation of graphics cards with the premium GeForce RTX models late last year This generation, powered by the ‘Turing architecture, has been split into two distinct halves; the future-ready but expensive GeForce RTX 20-series with ray tracing, and the budget-friendly GeForce GTX 16-series Graphics cards featuring the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti can cost upwards of Rs 1,00,000, but budget gamers have had to wait till now for family to fill out Weve only just seen the launches of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, GeForce GTX 1660, and now the GeForce GTX 1650 for value-conscious users
Theres now a complete set of replacements for the ‘Pascal-based GeForce GTX 10-series, which was very highly regarded throughout its long life for performance as well as power efficiency The newest launch is the entry-level GeForce GTX 1650 which promises to bring high-quality full-HD gaming to the sub-Rs 13,000 market
Were reviewing this GPU today, along with the next model in line, the GeForce GTX 1660 For our tests, we have two graphics cards supplied by Gigabyte, both of which are factory overclocked and are priced slightly higher than basic variants Could one of these cards be the perfect option to match your needs and budget? Lets find out
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G left and GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G right
For a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of these new GPUs, you can check out our complete guide to the Turing architecture, which covers the branch of chips that the GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards are based on The same principles apply to the GeForce GTX 16-series, except for the lack of dedicated hardware resources for ray tracing By stripping this out, Nvidia has been able to reach lower prices We dont think any gamer on a tight budget will mind, since there are still very few games that support it
Even without ray tracing, the GeForce GTX 16-series has all the benefits of the new Turing architecture, including concurrent execution of integer and floating-point instructions, improved scheduling, a unified cache, and new shading algorithms These GPUs should handily outperform their GeForce 10-series predecessors For more about how the RTX and GTX versions of Turing differ, you can read our Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB Review
The GeForce GTX 1650 GPU is codenamed TU117, and it features 896 cores called CUDA units the chip physically has more, but these are selectively disabled to improve manufacturing yields These are arranged into 14 clusters called Streaming Multiprocessors
Nvidia has set the base and boost clock speeds of the TU117 at 1485MHz and 1665MHz respectively, and all GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards will have 4GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 128-bit bus, for a 128GBps of memory bandwidth The TDP is an impressively low 75W and this GPU can run off motherboard power alone with no need for a PCIe power connector
The GeForce GTX 1660 uses the same TU116 GPU as the GeForce GT 1660 Ti, but with some of its resources disabled There are 1,408 CUDA cores instead of 1,536 which means there are 22 SM clusters rather than 24 Interestingly, the at 1530MHz and 1785MHz base and boost clock speeds are very slightly higher than those of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, though its still obviously the less capable variant
You get 6GB of GDDR5 RAM instead of GDDR6 That takes memory bandwidth down from 288GBps to 192GBps This is still a whole lot better than the 3GB of RAM that this GPUs predecessor, the GeForce GTX 1060, had at around the same price level The TDP is 120W, which is still very low
Just like with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, there wont be any Founders Edition graphics cards for either of these GPUs designed and sold by Nvidia itself, but thankfully theres a robust ecosystem of partner companies with multiple models in the market since launch day In fact, some are selling for slightly less than Nvidias recommended launch price
GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G with a bigger heatsink top and Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G bottom
Gigabyte offers four graphics card models with the GeForce GTX 1650 GPU and four with the GeForce GTX 1660 One in each series is a Mini-ITX card for small-form-factor PCs with a single-fan cooler and less aggressive factory overclocking Of the other three in each line, there are dual- and triple-fan coolers, varying degrees of factory overclocking, and slightly different cosmetic touches The two cards that were reviewing today fall in the middle of their respective product families
Starting with our GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G, this is a relatively compact two-slot card, though the cooler is a little taller and longer than the PCB itself Given that this is a low-end GPU, it has modest cooling needs and the two 90mm fans are probably overkill The heatsink itself is quite small Gigabyte has designed its fan blades with a ridged surface that is supposed to improve airflow The two fans spin in opposite directions, which Gigabyte says is more efficient because it reduces turbulence
Interestingly, although the GeForce GTX 1650 GPU does not require power over and above the 75W that the motherboard itself can provide through the PCIe slot, this model still has a single 6-pin PCIe power connector This is most likely for stability with the factory overclock We tried running this card unplugged to see if the extra power was optional, but all we got was a warning on screen telling us our test bench would not boot without it
This particular GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card has been factory overclocked to run at 1785MHz boost speed clock speed, but all other specifications are stock Interestingly, Gigabyte has gone with three HDMI 20b ports and a single DisplayPort 14 for video output Low-end cards usually have legacy DVI connectors for those upgrading older PCs You get dustcaps for all the ports, which is always a nice touch
GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G top and Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G bottom with different combinations of display outputs
Moving on, we also have the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6GB with us for review This model doesnt use the Windforce name but the cooler shroud and fans look identical to the ones on its more affordable sibling Both cards have very nearly the same dimensions, but on closer inspection the GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6GB is actually slightly shorter Despite that, it has a much beefier block of aluminium under the shroud with two copper heatpipes winding around it Theres also a black backplate which is most likely more for looks than rigidity
Different power connectors on the GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G top and Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G bottom
Our test bench consists of an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, Gigabyte Aorus X470 Gaming 7 Wifi motherboard, 2x8GB of Gskill DDR4 RAM, a 1TB Samsung SSD 860 Evo boot drive, Corsair RM650 power supply, and Asus PB287Q 4K monitor We used Windows 10 1803 and Nvidias GeForce Game Ready Driver version 43039 for both cards
Starting with the GeForce GTX 1650, what we see is that performance across the board is almost exactly half of what we got with the GeForce RTX 2060 Considering that GeForce GTX 1650-based graphics cards cost much less than half of the GeForce RTX 2060s recommended price, this is a strong showing Gigabytes default factory overclocks help this GPU look good in our tests, and there isnt a significant price premium over stock-clocked cards
There isnt a huge performance difference between the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and the GeForce GTX 1660, which was perhaps to be expected However, stepping down to the GeForce GTX 1650, the numbers take a much bigger hit The scaling is consistent with how graphics cards based on these three GPUs are priced
We ran through 3DMarks DirectX 12 Time Spy and DirectX 11 Fire Strike test suites Its clear that the GeForce GTX 1650 is not suited for the higher-end versions of these tests, which render at 4K As expected, we get reasonable results at the lower end of the scale Its beefier sibling, the GeForce GTX 1660, held up much better
Moving on to Unigine Valley running at 1920x1080 using the Ultra preset with 8xAA, the GeForce GTX 1650 averaged 429fps which isnt bad It doesnt meet the 60fps standard for smoothness, but the average stays comfortably above 30fps, and this will be fine for many people The GeForce GTX 1660 however did manage to average 643fps but there was some visible stutter and a significant gap between the highest and lowest frame rates
Next up are some in-game benchmarks, which let us compare different GPUs against each other since all conditions are identical across runs The GeForce GTX 1650 put up a respectable average of 56fps in Far Cry 5 with the test running at 1920x1080 using the Ultra preset Using the same settings, the GeForce GTX 1660 managed 79fps Switching to Rise of the Tomb Raider, we settled on the High preset at 1920x1080 with FXAA enabled, and got an average of 6397fps and 10068fps for the two GPUs respectively With a game of this calibre, even the lower-end GPU did a good job
In Metro Last Light: Redux, we tried the Very High preset at 1920x1080 with 4xAF and SSAA enabled Our first run on the GeForce GTX 1650 resulted in an average of just 3514fps Disabling SSAA immediately took us up to 6467fps The clear implication is that you do have to compromise on quality settings when buying a graphics card at this price level, but you can still have a respectable gaming experience Of course you could step up to the GeForce GTX 1660, which gave us 577fps and then 1039fps when we replicated both configurations
In most of our gaming tests with the GeForce GTX 1650, visuals on screen were slightly jittery, and users might want to tweak individual quality settings for the smoothest experience We can also see that it would be unrealistic to try playing these games at resolutions above full-HD on the GeForce GTX 1650 You get a little more headroom with the GeForce GTX 1660 but the great news is you really dont have to spend so much money anymore
To round things off, we spent some time playing games freely while observing frame rates Doom 2016 is always super-smooth even on low-end hardware, and we found that we could push the resolution up all the way to 4K and use the Ultra quality preset using the GeForce GTX 1650, and our average framerate hovered around 40fps in the final boss battle At full-HD, we didnt drop below 90fps and usually stayed at around 100fps After swapping in the higher-end GPU, we saw averages closer to 60fps and 145fps for the two resolutions respectively
With the more affordable GeForce GTX 1650, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt averaged 48fps at full-HD using the High preset with High post-processing, and there was very little stuttering in visuals The GeForce GTX 1660 went all the way up to 72fps but there was still minor jitter now and then
The fans of both our review cards, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Windforce OC 4G and the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G were completely at rest when we werent gaming, and even when games did load, they were virtually silent at full speed Theres no noise, and no harsh transitions when they spin up Either one could be good for a compact gaming and media PC that you want running unobtrusively in a living room or bedroom
If youre upgrading from a graphics card thats more than one generation old, youll see significant performance benefits without spending a huge amount of money The GeForce GTX 1650 is a very good entry-level option for 1920x1080 gaming as long as you dont expect high-end effects in the very latest games If you need a graphics card that can run without additional PCIe power, one based on the GeForce GTX 1650 would be your best option right now – just make sure it isnt an overclocked model like our Gigabyte unit We hope to see fanless or low-profile options in the future
Working against the GeForce GTX 1650 is the fact that Graphics cards with AMDs Radeon RX 570 can be found for around Rs 13,500 right now, or even less when they go on sale You also get very strong game bundles with it from time to time, such as AMDs 50th Anniversary offer right now which is worth at least Rs 6,000 The Radeon RX 570 offers quite a bit more grunt in most games The downside is that this GPU is two years old now and requires more power and cooling We would like to see GeForce GTX 1650-based cards drop in price, but that isnt very likely
The GeForce GTX 1660 is a significant step up from the GeForce GTX 1650, for a reasonable cost difference The 2GB difference in video RAM will also set these two models apart a few years down the line when games are even more demanding In fact, if you were considering the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, you might find that its sibling offers a better balance of performance and cost for you
AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics cards have also fallen in price since launch and 8GB versions can be found for under Rs 19,000 now, but the GeForce GTX 1660 comes out ahead In fact, the performance of Nvidias new offering at this price point more closely matches that of the more expensive Radeon RX 590, which we tested quite recently Of course that could change with the upcoming Radeon ‘Navi architecture in a few months time
It should go without saying that the new GeForce GTX 16-series completely wipes out the GeForce GTX 10-series These cards despite being popular and having earned great reputations, are no longer good options to buy You might be tempted by an older 2GB GeForce GTX 1050 card selling for around Rs 11,500, but the lower price isnt worth it
 

     Timez Doctor

          www.timezdoctor.com