MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER GAMING X review - Introduction

MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER GAMING X 4G review

MSI released their GeForce  GTX 1650 SUPER GAMING X, a product with a more than capable cooler as well being factory tweaked. NVIDIA's new SUPER edition card comes with 12 Gbps GDDR6 graphics memory, however, it has only got 4 GiByte of it. Our review was delayed slightly as we wanted to review this card with an official driver, which NVIDIA would not hand out prior to availability. Much like the 1660 Super, the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER is also built on the TU116 GPU and according to NVIDIA offers up to 2x the performance of the GeForce GTX 1050. That TU116, however, has been further cut down from 1,408 shaders processors towards 1,280 shader processors but still has a handsome shader processor count coming from that 'regular' GTX 1650. MSI released their GTX 1650 SUPER GAMING X, a product with more a capable cooler as well being factory tweaked. The SUPER edition card comes with GDDR6 memory at that factory defined 12 Gbps. Aside from the factory tweaked products the base clock is the same as well at 1530 MHz with a boost clock of 1725 MHz. So the SUPER versions differ in-memory configuration only, compared to the non-super model. The graphics memory will run 14 Gbps GDDR6 

GTX, not RTX. The 1650/1660 Super Series is based on the mainstream GPU called TU116. To make it an affordable solution The NVIDIA did not implement DX-R and DLSS features, which means there are no RT and Tensor cores on this GPU. It's a fall back towards the original shader design model. And that's where we land today with this review. A fully enabled TU116-400 GPU has 1536 shader cores (aka CUDA cores / Stream processors). The 1650 series is making use of the Turing architecture and will not have Raytracing and Tensor cores, this is why NVIDIA dropped the RTX suffix back to GTX. New in this range is the 1650 SUPER, with a distinct difference compared to the regular 1650, the memory subsystem at GDDR6 at 12 Gbps, coming from GDDR5 at 8 Gbps.

	GTX 1060	GTX 1650	GTX 1650 SUPER	GTX 1660 Ti	RTX 2060
GPU	GP106	12nm FF TU117	12nm FF TU116	12nm FF TU116	12nm FF TU106
Shader cores	1280	896	1280	1536	1920
Memory	6 GB / 3GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5	4GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6
Memory bus	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit	192-bit	192-bit

The new cards, (if priced right) can become NVIDIA's new mainstream moneymaker, as they should offer very decent gaming performance in the 1080p resolution domain. NVIDIA is not distributing a reference design card to the media. Ergo, the reviews you'll see are mostly based on AIB partner cards.

MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER GAMING X 4G

As always, MSI will offer several SKUs. Having smaller TU116 silicon with close to 6.6 Billion transistors it doesn't run very warm. The cooler applied is offered in a dual-slot TWIN FROZR 7 design. The card comes fitted with one PEG (PCI Express Graphics) power header (6-pin). MSI applies their latest iteration of the TWIN FROZR 7 cooler for the GeForce GTX 1650S which makes use of two 9 cm TORX 3.0 fans which combine the advantages of both traditional and dispersion fan blades to generate huge amounts of airflow. The new trims on the traditional fan blades create concentrated airflow for higher air pressure while also reducing noise. It's an attractive product with good cooling and acoustic performance. The card offers one HDMI port and three DisplayPorts. There is no DVI and/or Virtual link (USB) connector. This Turing 116 GPU empowered product keeps that GPU at roughly 60 to 65 Degrees C marker depending on game load whilst remaining virtually silent. The GDDR6 memory has been not been tweaked, the ICs are stock 12 Gbps (effective clock-rate) but can easily be bumped upwards towards the 15 Gbps region with the flick of your fingers as we'll show you in the tweaking chapters. For it's the latest series MSI applies a gunmetal grey & black look. Meet the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER from MSI.