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The EVGA GTX 1650 GDDR6 SC Ultra is in a difficult position right now. It performs much better than a GDDR5-equipped GTX 1650, nominally at the same $160 price as well. But that's just not going to work when the GTX 1650 Super also costs $160. The 1650 has more cores, giving it nearly 20% higher performance — even with a healthy overclock, the 1650 GDDR6 is still 10% slower than a 1650 Super. This can all be fixed with a price cut, but margins on budget hardware are already thin, so that may not happen.
Realistically, if your choice is between a $145 GTX 1650 with GDDR5 memory (that's the lowest price we can currently find), or a GTX 1650 GDDR6 for $160, or a GTX 1650 Super that also costs $160 (again, those are the lowest prices right now), it's not even a close competition. The GTX 1650 Super is the right choice, period. AMD's RX 5500 XT 4GB can be had for $150 after rebate, so that's another viable option, but the 1650 GDDR6 needs to be priced closer to $140, and the GDDR5 model either needs to go away completely, or drop to $120 or less.
If you can score the EVGA GTX 1650 GDDR6 on a sale, it's worth a look. It runs cool and only uses about 80W of power under load — or less than 95W even with close to the maximum 'safe' overclock we could manage. But the GTX 1650 Super is the superior card, with better video encoding and decoding acceleration as a bonus. You don't even need to stray far, as EVGA sells its GTX 1650 Super SC Ultra for $170, which has all of the benefits of TU116 plus 20% higher performance for only $10 extra.
Which brings us back to the earlier question: Where have all the good budget GPUs gone? The answer is that $150-$175 is the new definition of 'budget,' unfortunately. If you want to spend less than $150 on a graphics card, you'll inevitably end up making some serious compromises — on performance, efficiency, features, and more. And looking forward to AMD's RDNA 2 and Nvidia's Ampere architectures, it doesn't seem like those will do any better on the low cost front. Maybe Intel's Xe Graphics will be the hidden savior of budget GPUs. More likely, budget graphics will become the domain of AMD Renoir CPUs and Intel's future Xe LP integrated solutions.
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