Nvidia has given the Super treatment to its budget-focused GTX 1650 Super. The new GTX 1650 Super card, like previously released Super GPUs, is a mish-mash of existing GPUs melded together to find a sweet spot that fills a performance gap. In this case, the 1650 Super sits in the large gap between the GTX 1650 and GTX 1660. The GTX 1650 Super adds more CUDA cores and GDDR6 (versus GDDR5) over the GTX 1650 and is marketed as a 1080p gaming card that will compete with AMD’s RX 5500 series (which has been announced, but has yet to materialize in the desktop space).
Similar to the GTX 1660 Super we reviewed, Nvidia hasn’t released a reference card, but left board partners to work their magic. Board partners are left to tweak clock speeds and add coolers and fans to bring unique choices to the market. In this case, we have a Zotac card in our hands which is a compact, two-slot design with dual-fan cooling and a 100W TDP and a listed boost clock of 1,725 MHz.
All GTX 1650 Supers carry 4GB of GDDR6, resting on a 128-bit bus. In this case, the memory runs at 12 Gbps, increasing the available bandwidth over the GDDR5 used in the non-Super GTX 1650 and GTX 1660, along with the increased CUDA core count. Power is fed to the GPU and memory through a single 6-pin PCIe connector. Coupled with the slot power, the card is able to use up to 150W while still being in spec. The 100W TDP sits between the 75W GTX 1650 and 120W GTX 1660, so it still sips on power.
The Zotac card uses a dual-fan cooling solution with a black-and-grey accented shroud covering the heatsink. Air is circulated in the case with this type of cooling, but does tend to be a bit quieter than the blower style. There’s no RGB LED lighting on this card, which is expected at this price point. Your RGB bling will have to come from somewhere else.
The GTX 1650 Super Twin Fan’s three display outputs, DisplayPort (1.4), HDMI 2.0b and a Dual-Link DVI-D, support up to three monitors. Below is a list of specs from Zotac, along with how the card stacks up against the 1650 and 1660. Note that some key specs are missing, and with no driver released ahead of time, we don’t yet have performance numbers.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Zotac Gaming GTX 1650 Super Twin Fan | Nvidia GTX 1650 | Nvidia GTX 1660 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture (GPU) | Turing (TU116?) | Turing (TU117) | Turing (TU116) |
| ALUs | 1280 | 876 | 1408 |
| Peak FP32 Compute (Based on Typical Boost) | ??? TFLOPS | 2.98 TFLOPS | 5.02 TFLOPS |
| Tensor Cores | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| RT Cores | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Texture Units | ?? | 56 | 88 |
| ROPs | ?? | 32 | 48 |
| Base Clock Rate | ???? MHz | 1485 MHz | 1530 MHz |
| Nvidia Boost/AMD Game Rate | 1725 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1785 MHz |
| AMD Boost Rate | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Memory Capacity | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit | 128-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | ??? GB/s | 128 GB/s | 192.1 GB/s |
| L2 Cache | ????MB | 1024KB | 1536KB |
| TDP | 100W | 75W | 120W |
| Transistor Count | ?? billion | 4.7 billion | 6.6 billion |
| Die Size | ?? mm² | 200 mm² | 284 mm² |
The Zotac card itself is small, measuring in at 6.2 x 4.5 x 1.39-inches (158.5 x 115.2 x 35.3mm) and barely reaches past the back of the PCIe slot. The small size makes it a great candidate for SFF (Small Form Factor) builds and HTPCs where real estate can be an issue.
Zotac’s Geforce GTX 1650 Super Twin fan should be available today. Price on this specific model is set at $159.99, which undercuts the GTX 1660 ($220+) by a fair amount and costs $10 more than than the base GTX 1650 ($150+). Expect a full review of this card soon.
