ZOTAC Gaming GeForce GTX 1650 OC

VERDICT The GTX 1650 is Nvidia’s most powerful budget GPU yet, but it faces a strong challenge from the newly cheap RX 570

- James Archer

ALMOST A YEAR after Nvidia first announced its next-generation RTX 20-series cards, we finally have a replacement for the entry-level GTX 1050 as well. The GTX 1650 is a world away from the monster frame rates and real-time ray-tracing of its RTX cousins, joining the GTX 1660 Ti (Shopper 377) and GTX 1660 in the more affordable 16-series, but it’s still an interesting proposition, especially when it’s in the tiny form factor of this Zotac model.

The underlying GPU is the cheapest of Nvidia’s current crop, and without a GTX 1650 Ti to compete with, is the only truly ‘budget’ GPU of the entire generation. To help shoulder this responsibility, it has 4GB of GDDR5 memory – twice that of the GTX 1050 – as well as an increased CUDA core count of 896.

GTX 1650 processors have a stock boost clock of 1,665MHz, but Zotac has overclocked this ever so slightly to 1,695MHz. Its design comprises a simple, single-fan cooler, with the bare minimum of video outputs on the rear: one HDMI port, one DisplayPort and one DVI-D connector. There’s no VirtualLink USB Type-C port for VR headsets, as you’d get on the 20-series cards.