Zotac Gaming GTX 1650 Super review - Introduction

Zotac Gaming GTX 1650 Super 4G review

We review the Zotac Gaming GTX 1650 Super, a small compact version of the 1650S that is merely 16cm long. Despite its compact size it has been fitted with 2 fans and packs very decent Full HD performance. 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.

Zotac Gaming GTX 1650 Super 4GB

Having smaller TU116 silicon with close to 6.6 Billion transistors it doesn't run very warm. The card comes fitted with one PEG (PCI Express Graphics) power header (6-pin). Zotac applies a dual-fan cooler on what is probably the smallest form factor card available for the GeForce GTX 1650S. It's an attractive product, holding no RGB with good cooling and acoustic performance at more normalized levels. The card offers one HDMI port, DVI and  DisplayPorts. This Turing 116 GPU empowered product keeps that GPU at roughly 60  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.