The latest rumor coming out of China is that Nvidia is supplying its partners with more Turing silicon to deliver more GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards to the market. The report specificially mentions mainland China, so it's uncertain if Nvidia is doing this on a global scale. However, we've reached out to the chipmaker for clarification.
Nvidia has already rekindled GeForce RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti as a stopgap solution to the ongoing graphics card shortage, so it doesn't surprise us that the GeForce GTX 1650 would get the same treatment. The Turing-powered graphics card does rank third on Steam's Hardware & Software Survey for a reason.
According to the report, Nvidia was focusing more on its mobile graphics cards at the beginning of the year. As a result, there was a lack of supply of TU117 silicon for the desktop GeForce GTX 1650. However, the chipmaker will reportedly increase supply between the months of April and May.
The GeForce GTX 1650 isn't a gaming monster, but wields sufficient firepower to offer consumers a comfortable 1080p gaming experience. More importantly, the GeForce GTX 1650 isn't proficient for mining cryptcurrency, meaning gamers have less competition buying it up. According to Minerstat, the GeForce GTX 1650 puts up a puny hash rate of 13.2 MH/s in Ethereum, so there are way better options out there for miners. For comparison, even Nvidia's entry-level CMP 30HX is good for 26 MH/s.
The GeForce GTX 1650 arrived on the market with a $149 price tag, but that was two years ago, long before the pandemic and graphics card shortages. Nowadays, custom GeForce GTX 1650 models are selling for between $400 and $900. Despite Nvidia injecting more stock into the market, we don't expect the pricing to improve anytime soon.
