Palit GeForce GTX 1650 Super StormX review - Introduction

Palit GeForce GTX 1650 StormX OC 4GB review

Palit also released their GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, we test the StormX OC model that comes with a single fan and an easy to drop in 17cm design as well as being factory tweaked. The SUPER edition card comes with 12 Gbps GDDR6 graphics memory, however, it has only got 4GB 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.

Palit GeForce GTX 1650 Super StormX 4GB

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 single fan cooling design. The card comes fitted with one PEG (PCI Express Graphics) power header (6-pin). Palit made sure the card firsts into any form factor, as it's even slightly small than 17cm. It's a funky small product with good cooling however very average acoustic performance as we'll later explain. The card offers one of each, HDMI port, DisplayPorts and a DVI connector. This Turing 116 GPU empowered product keeps that GPU at roughly 55 Degrees C marker depending on game load. 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.