Nvidia’s $160 GeForce GTX 1650 Super had a super bizarre launch.
Its still-available predecessor, the $150 GTX 1650 (go. pcworld.com/150g), skipped the vastly improved Turing NVENC video encoder and got pummeled in performance by AMD’s Radeon RX 570, a much cheaper GPU, all to let the card fit into the motherboards with no extra power cabling required. With AMD’s next-gen Radeon RX 5500 series looming (go.pcworld.com/gt55), Nvidia revealed the drastically turbocharged GTX 1650 Super— but then failed to inform press of pricing or provide drivers for launch day reviews. Those are both extremely unusual moves, ones mirrored in recent history only by Nvidia’s attempt to bury reviews of the original lackluster GTX 1650. Because of that, we went so far as to recommend avoiding the new card (go.pcworld.com/avod) until reviews surfaced.
Even weirder? The GeForce GTX 1650 Super kicks ass. Nvidia’s latest graphics card doesn’t drastically redefine the sub-$200 market, but for the first time in years, AMD’s aging Polaris-based GPUs are no longer the budget gaming champions. The Radeon RX 580 is finally dead.
Let’s dig into the $170 Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1650 Super.
SUPER SPECS, FEATURES, AND PRICE
Nvidia completely overhauled the Super-fied version of the GTX 1650. It’s got a new GPU, a new video encoder, and even blazing-fast new GDDR6 memory. Rather than reinvent the wheel, here’s what we said when Nvidia first revealed the GTX 1650 Super (go. pcworld.com/60gf) alongside the GeForce GTX 1660 Super about a month ago:
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