Nvidia has outdone itself this time, even by the chipmaker's own standards. AIDA64 (via @momomo_us) has just added support for two new unreleased variants of the GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card, increasing the number of different versions to four.
The original GeForce GTX 1650, which landed last year, debuted with the TU117 silicon. The graphics card's 896 CUDA cores were complemented by 4GB of 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit memory interface.
A little less than a year later, Nvidia rolled out the GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6, and, as the name implies, the graphics card came with faster 12Gbps GDDR6 memory. Although the GDDR6 variant features lower clock speeds, the swap to GDDR6 memory allowed the graphics card to deliver up to 50% higher memory bandwidth. The upgrade contributed to a real-world performance improvement of up to 14% over the vanilla version.
AIDA64's latest changelog shows that Nvidia isn't quite done with the GeForce GTX 1650 yet.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Specifications
| Header Cell - Column 0 | GeForce GTX 1650 TU106* | GeForce GTX 1650 TU116* | GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6 | GeForce GTX 1650 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Architecture | Turing (TU106) | Turing (TU116) | Turing (TU117) | Turing (TU117) |
| Shading Units | 896 | 896 | 896 | 896 |
| Texture Units | 56 | 56 | 56 | 56 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Base Clock Rate | 1,410 MHz | 1,410 MHz | 1,410 MHz | 1,485 MHz |
| Boost Clock Rate | 1,590 MHz | 1,590 MHz | 1,590 MHz | 1,665 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps | 12 Gbps | 12 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Memory Capacity | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 192 GBps | 192 GBps | 192 GBps | 128 GBps |
| L2 Cache | 1MB | 1MB | 1MB | 1MB |
| TDP | 75W | 75W | 75W | 75W |
| Transistor Count | 10.8 billion | 6.6 billion | 4.7 billion | 4.7 billion |
| Die Size | 445 mm² | 284 mm² | 200 mm² | 200 mm² |
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
AIDA64 refers to the two new variants as the GeForce GTX 1650 TU116 and GeForce GTX 1650 TU106. It's pretty much the same formula as the GDDR6 version that denotes the type of memory in the model name. On this occasion, the suffixes designate the silicon that's used inside each refreshed model.
In the case of the GeForce GTX 1650 TU116, the TU116 die is the same one that Nvidia employs in the the other GeForce GTX 16-series SKUs, including the GTX 1650 Super, GTX 1660, GTX 1660 Super and GTX 1660 Ti.
The TU106 die, on the other hand, is a very interesting selection, and the one that raises many questions. For context, the TU106 is present inside Nvidia's GeForce RTX 20-series models, such as the GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070. Unlike the TU116 and TU117 silicons, the TU106 does house Nvidia's Tensor and RT cores. Has Nvidia finally caved in and decided to bring ray tracing to a GTX 16-series graphics card? Unfortunately, we don't know for the time being. AIDA64 didn't give any hints on the specifications. Nonetheless, the base specifications should be the same for both new variants.
The new versions of the GeForce GTX 1650 probably aren't a coincidence. Nvidia is likely just reprocessing defective dies that don't meet the requirements for higher tier models and using them in the GeForce GTX 1650. Alternatively, the chipmaker might just be getting rid of leftover Turing silicon to make space for Ampere, which is heavily rumored to debut in September. In any event, it's easy to see why Nvidia chose the GeForce GTX 1650 in particular.
According to the Steam Hardware Survey for May 2020, the GeForce GTX 1650 was the fifth most popular graphics cards among Steam gamers. If there was a fast way to dispose of unused silicon, the GeForce GTX 1650 would be the best candidate.
