ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1650 SUPER Graphics Card Review – Bow Down To The New Budget King

Nvidia has been pushing a lot of graphics cards over different price points to ensure its market dominance. We recently reviewed the GTX 1660 Super, which aims to undercut the soon-to-be-released RX 5500 7-nanometer NAVI GPU. It’s a way better card compared to the vanilla model to the point where it even cannibalizes Nvidia’s own GTX 1660 Ti variant. The GTX 1650 Super was also announced the same day with its bigger brother, but it wasn’t available until today. It’s the most awaited card since it has a lower price compared to the GTX 1660 lineup. The GTX 1650 Super has also been hyped as the proper replacement to the ever-popular GTX 1050 Ti. Let’s see if the ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super proves to be the next entry-level king.

What’s new?

The GTX 1650 is a direct replacement of the previous generation GTX 1050 graphics card. However, the GTX 1650 didn’t live up to the expectations of GTX 1050 card owners, especially the enthusiasts who are rocking the popular GTX 1050 Ti. Much like the “Ti” iteration of the previous cards, the SUPER moniker should bring a better value in terms of performance per dollar. The GTX 1650 Super gets a bump in the memory department by having GDDR6 instead of the conventional GDDR5 found on the non-super model. Albeit, the bandwidth is slower by 2Gbps when compared to the GTX 1660 Super’s GDDR6 memory upgrade of 14Gbps.

ROG STRIX GTX 1650 SUPER

There are no founders/reference edition of the GTX 1650 Super similar to the GTX 1660 Super. We have the ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super as our custom graphics card. The box layout shows a glamour shot of the GTX 1650 Super beside the famed ROG Strix logo in typical ROG fashion. More features are listed at the back, such as Direct CU cooling and ASUS Aura Sync lighting.

The ROG Strix cooler shroud of the GTX 1650 Super looks like an old ASUS DCU II cooler, which was last seen on the GTX 1060. Its base shroud is infused with the modern ROG Strix circuit linings that bring it forward to today’s aesthetics. Like any other ROG branded graphics card, the ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super comes with a metal backplate for aesthetics and heat dissipation.

Despite the bulky and angular design of the ROG Strix 1650 Super, it only occupies two slots with a width of 9.6 inches. GeForce GTX branding is positioned to the left while the ROG logo is on the right, although slightly tilted due to the shroud design.

One of the distinguishing factors of the ROG Strix 1650 Super to the ROG Strix non-super card is the physical fan profile slider and RGB on/off switch. Though the GTX 1650 vanilla version doesn’t require power besides the 75watt provided by the slot, our ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super comes with a 6-pin power connector for an additional 75-watts. The extra wattage required comes from the faster GDDR6 memory and higher boost clock speed.

There’s a standard amount of ports on the GTX 1650 Super with 2 DisplayPorts and 2 HDMI ports. DVI has been eliminated since the RTX 20 series. There’s also a 4-pin PWM fan header on the other side of the card. It allows the connected fan to be controlled by the GPU itself for better thermals.

BENCHMARKS

The performance of the ROG Strix GTX 1650 SUPER shall be evaluated using a mixture of synthetic and gaming benchmarks. Windows is updated to the latest stable build as well as drivers. BIOS settings are set to UEFI default as well as each individual GPUs’ clock and fan speeds.

TEST BENCH

Processor: Intel Core i9 9900K @ 5Ghz
Cooling: NZXT Kraken X62 280mm AIO
Motherboard: ROG Strix Z390-F Gaming
Memory: HyperX Predator 16GB  3200Mhz
Storage: SanDisk 512GB M.2 SSD | HyperX Fury 240GB  RGB SSD
PSU: Corsair HX1200i
GPU: ROG Strix GTX 1650 SUPER  | ASUS RX 580 | Sapphire RX 570 | ROG Strix GTX 1650 | ASUS 1050 Ti
OS: Windows 10 Pro Build 1903
Drivers: GeForce 441.20 | Adrenalin 2019 19.11.3

3DMARK

3DMark is the go-to benchmark for gamers because of the ability to share and compare results online. We used Time Spy DX 12 benchmark and Fire Strike DX 11 benchmark and opted out of Port Royal since all the GPUs used in this review do not support Ray Tracing.

The ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super gets stomped by the two AMD cards in 3DMark Firestrike DirectX 11 benchmark. However, 3DMark Time Spy benchmark results show the GTX 1650 Super easily beating out the rest of the product stack. It’s also the only card to hit above 5000 in the system score in this test. There’s a clear sign of improvement over the non-super GTX 1650, but the difference in DX 11 and DX 12 ranking goes to that synthetic benchmarks should be taken with a heavy grain of salt as it doesn’t tell the complete story.

DOTA 2

Dota 2 is one of the most popular games globally; that said, chances are you’ll be playing one of the popular F2P titles. Our benchmark sequence is based on a replay of OG vs. Liquid in the TI9 grand finals from the team fight that happened on 28:30 to 29:30.

The GTX 1650 Super outputs a higher average FPS across the product stack, but it doesn’t take a complete victory as it has a lower .1% Lows compared to the RX 570 and RX 580.

Far Cry 5

FarCry 5 is an FPS game published by Ubisoft and uses the Dunia engine. It heavily relies on and takes advantage of DirectX 11 to render a realistic environment that makes it taxing to both the CPU and GPU.

Far Cry 5, on the other hand, shows a well-rounded victory for the GTX 1650 Super. It outperforms both GTX 1650s by 40 percent in terms of average FPS. It also beats the RX 580 by a 10 percent margin.

Rainbow Six Siege

Rainbow Six Seige is one of the few popular AAA games that’s still popular in 2019 due to its competitive gameplay mechanics. R6S uses the AnvilNext game engine, which is developed by the game’s publisher, Ubisoft. As of writing, Rainbow Six Siege is currently the most popular Tom Clancy title beating out Wildlands, Breakpoint and even, Division 2.

The ROG Strix GTX 1650 takes the crown in Rainbow Six Seige. Not only does it outperform every GPU we compared it with, but its 1% and .1% FPS is higher than the GTX 1650’s average output. This translates to a 35% performance improvement over the non-super 1650 and doubles that of the average frames generated by the GTX 1050 Ti.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is arguably the most anticipated game of the year. It’s the first cross-play compatible game title of the franchise. COD: MW is developed by Infinity ward using a new IW engine and is published by Activision. The game uses DX 12 by default, which makes it an excellent choice to include in our benchmark suite.

The GTX 1650 Super performs admirably well in the most latest FPS title. It generates more than double the average framerate of the GTX 1050 Ti. It also outperforms the more expensive RX 580 by twenty percent.

Apex Legends

Apex Legends is a character-based Free-to-play battle royale game developed by Respawn Entertainment, the makers of Titanfall and Titanfall 2. It utilizes a modified version of Valve’s Source Engine.

The GDDR6 memory improvement pays off well, as seen in our benchmark of a large-scale battle royale game.

TEMPERATURES

The graphics cards are benchmarked in an airconditioned room with a 21c ambient temperature target. The cooling performance provided by the ROG Strix cooler is superb, as it’s the only card to hit a load temperature of below 60-degrees. This is very impressive considering that the GTX 1650 Super is equipped with a more power-hungry GDDR6 memory, and it shares a similar cooler design with the non-super ROG Strix 1650 variant.

POWER CONSUMPTION

The ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super sits above both GTX 1650s, given that the Super is outfitted with GDDR6 memory. It also consumes far less wattage than the RX 580 and RX 570 by 77% and 42%, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Performance-wise, the ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super dominates AMD’s RX 500 series, synthetic benchmarks aside, as well as Nvidia’s own offering. It has a better performance improvement over the current 1050 Ti budget king.  The GTX 1650 Super beats the non-super GTX 1650 by having 37% more FPS and edges out the RX 580 series by an average of 10%.  It is also noticeable cooler despite having GDRR6 memory thanks to the ROG Strix cooler, which kept the GTX 1650 Super at a frosty 56-degrees, Factoring in both Price and Power Efficiency makes the GTX 1650 Super more compelling than the RX 500 series and GTX 16 series. The GTX 1650 Super is priced at an MSRP of $160 USD / Php 9,970, which is far less than the market and second-hand price of the Radeon RX 580 8GB.

Moreover, it’s also more power-efficient by 77% percent. The GTX 1650 Super should have been marketed “eSports GPU”(instead of the GTX 1650) since it’s the only sub Php 10,000 card to hit more than 100 FPS. The ROG Strix 1650 Super’s power consumption of 107 watts makes it a viable option in budget PC builds. The GTX 1650 Super’s value is further strengthened with the ROG Strix touch-up. It encompasses premium and flagship-like quality and aesthetics. The custom-cooler maximizes the GTX 1650 Super’s performance with a bit of headroom for overclocking. A not so premium price to pay for only Php 10,500.

So what did Nvidia achieve with the GTX 1650 SUPER? Simple. They managed to finally create the BEST VALUE 1080p graphics card even though it’s performance doesn’t seem to be that impressive compared to the leap done by the GTX 1660 Super over its vanilla variant. It has a similar horsepower that of the reigning 2-yr old RX 580 graphics card(3-year old die). Nvidia simply applied AMD’s strategy of equipping existing GPUs with faster memory.  Though Nvidia did it a step lower since it only used GDDR6 instead of HBM. This, in turn, allowed Nvidia to offer a more competitive GPU that outperforms other market alternatives without the trade-off in thermals, powers, and pricing even if it translates to cannibalizing their own GTX 1650.

Grant Soriano

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Grant is a Financial Management graduate from UST. His passion for gadgets and tech crossed him over in the industry where he could apply his knowledge as an enthusiast and in-depth analytic skills as a Finance Major. His passion allows him to earn at the same time help Gadget Pilipinas' readers in making smart, value-based decisions and purchases with his reviews and guides.