Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630 Briefly Appears on Colorful Website

Colorful GeForce GTX 1630
(Image credit: Colorful)

Tech news and Twitter rumor radar pings of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630 have become more frequent over recent weeks. Earlier today, Chinese graphics card maker Colorful added the GTX 1630 to its product roster, providing solid indications of an impending product launch. However, it has since seen the error of its ways and the product category has disappeared (but is preserved by Google's web cache). Images have also surfaced via NewFeaturesTech and Nael Grewther. While the category did show up, Colorful didn't give any specific card model details, so actual specifications are based on previous rumors. 

(Image credit: Colorful)
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Header Cell - Column 0

GeForce GTX 1650

GeForce GTX 1630

Architecture

TU117

TU117

Process Technology

TSMC 12FFN

TSMC 12FFN

Transistors (Billion)

4.7

4.7

Die size (mm^2)

200

200

SMs / CUs

16

8

GPU Cores

896

512

Base Clock (MHz)

1,485

1,485

Boost Clock (MHz)

1,665

1,800

VRAM Speed (Gbps)

8

12

VRAM (GB)

4

4

VRAM Bus Width

128

64

ROPs

32

16

TMUs

56

32

TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)

2.9

1.8

Bandwidth (GBps)

128

96

TDP (watts)

75

75

Launch Date

Apr 2019

2022

Official MSRP

$149

Under $149

According to the latest information we have, the Turing architecture GeForce GTX 1630 is designed to replace the aging Pascal architecture GTX 1050 Ti. The new entry-level gaming graphics card from Nvidia will use the same TU117 GPU as the GTX 1650, just with a number of important spec and memory subsystem cuts.

The new graphics card from Nvidia will be competing against the likes of the AMD Radeon RX 6400 and the Intel Arc A380. Nvidia might have decided to go with this further cut down SKU to meet Intel better on price. A recent Chinese review of the first Arc Alchemist desktop graphics card showed it was consistently beaten by the RX 6400 and GTX 1650, so perhaps Nvidia is hoping to shut the door on any price undercutting competition from the blue team with its new model.

Our last report about Nvidia's newest budget gaming GPU highlighted multiple Gigabyte branded GTX 1630 models that had surfaced on the EEC regulatory website. Gigabyte appeared to have four models prepared, including low profile (LP) variants expected to use recycled GTX 1650 cooler designs.

We will try and test one of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630 models as soon as we can get one, but don't expect it to have the muscle to join the ranks of the Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2022.

Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

  • twocows360
    What I'd really like to know is whether the 1630 will have any NVENC support. The 1650 and its underlying architecture has it, but Nvidia has been known to slash those features on budget cards to save on (I believe) licensing costs for the technology.

    I'm interested in these low end cards because they're the only ones with heat profiles in the reasonable range; I live in a small room and already have issues with temperature control without an Nvidia Portable Sun contributing to the problem. And honestly, if I can play games at 1080p on low-medium with a consistent 60+ framerate, I'm in a good spot.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    twocows360 said:
    What I'd really like to know is whether the 1630 will have any NVENC support. The 1650 and its underlying architecture has it, but Nvidia has been known to slash those features on budget cards to save on (I believe) licensing costs for the technology.

    I'm interested in these low end cards because they're the only ones with heat profiles in the reasonable range; I live in a small room and already have issues with temperature control without an Nvidia Portable Sun contributing to the problem. And honestly, if I can play games at 1080p on low-medium with a consistent 60+ framerate, I'm in a good spot.
    The TU117 has the older Volta NVENC, while the 1650 Super's TU116 has the newer Turing NVENC. I'd be surprised if Nvidia cut off the NVENC support, but stranger things have happened. NVENC would definitely put Nvidia ahead of RX 6400 in that area, which is probably the bigger target than Arc A380.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    So a GPU that people may afford to buy?
    Good ;)
    Reply
  • Giroro
    Why would the GTX 1630 and 1650 have a different number of cores per SM?
    Reply
  • gg83
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    The TU117 has the older Volta NVENC, while the 1650 Super's TU116 has the newer Turing NVENC. I'd be surprised if Nvidia cut off the NVENC support, but stranger things have happened. NVENC would definitely put Nvidia ahead of RX 6400 in that area, which is probably the bigger target than Arc A380.
    Hey Jarred, will all these low-end GPUs be obsolete with the arrival of the new APUs imminent?
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    gg83 said:
    Hey Jarred, will all these low-end GPUs be obsolete with the arrival of the new APUs imminent?
    That all depends on what AMD does with its desktop parts. We know the Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 series mobile APUs have up to 12 CUs and are paired with LPDDR5-6400 memory, but there's no desktop equivalent yet, and may never be.

    Some are hoping Ryzen 7000 series APUs will have up to 16 CUs, others think maybe 12 CUs, and I've even seen hints that they could be as little as 4 CUs — basically just a minimum level of graphics functionality, similar to Intel's UHD Graphics 770 that only has 32 EUs where the laptops can go up to 96 EUs.

    A 12 CU Ryzen 7000 APU clocking the graphics at over 2GHz and paired with DDR5 memory would at least be competitive with the RX 6400 — less bandwidth (and it's shared), but a closer link to the CPU might make that a moot point. Probably call it a slight advantage for the RX 6400 in gaming performance, but the Ryzen APUs will have all the missing media encoding functionality that Navi 24 lacks. If it's only 4 or 8 CUs, though, it's not going to be very useful for anything more than 720p gaming.
    Reply