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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 TU116

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 TU116: The Budget Warrior of 2025

April 2025

Introduction

Despite the rapid development of technology, the demand for affordable graphics cards for basic tasks and less demanding games remains high. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 TU116 is an updated version of the legendary GTX 1650, still relevant due to optimizations and an accessible price (~$160–170). Let’s explore who this model is suitable for in 2025 and what compromises it offers.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Turing Architecture: Modest but Efficient

The GTX 1650 TU116 is built on the Turing architecture but lacks the "premium" features of the RTX series. The TU116 chip is manufactured using TSMC's 12nm process, providing a balance between cost and energy efficiency.

What it Can and Cannot Do

- RTX Technologies (absent): No hardware support for ray tracing (RT cores) and DLSS.

- NVIDIA Adaptive Shading: Optimizes GPU load through dynamic shader management.

- Partial DirectX 12 Ultimate Support: Works with features like Variable Rate Shading but not with ray tracing.

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): Compatible with AMD's technology via drivers, enhancing FPS in FSR 3.0-supported games.

2. Memory: Speed vs. Size

GDDR6 and 4 GB: The Minimum for 2025

The card uses GDDR6 memory (previous TU116 versions were released with GDDR5) with a size of 4 GB and a 128-bit bus. Its bandwidth is 192 GB/s (12 Gbps * 128 bits / 8).

Impact on Gaming:

4 GB is sufficient for 1080p in titles like Fortnite or Apex Legends at medium settings, but modern AAA titles (e.g., Starfield or GTA VI) may experience stuttering due to insufficient VRAM.

3. Gaming Performance: 1080p as a Limit

Average FPS (medium settings):

- Counter-Strike 2: 120–140 FPS (1080p).

- Cyberpunk 2077 (without RT): 35–45 FPS (1080p, FSR 3.0 Quality).

- Hogwarts Legacy: 40–50 FPS (1080p, FSR Performance).

- The Finals: 55–60 FPS (1080p, low settings).

1440p and 4K:

For 1440p, you will need to lower settings to minimum or use FSR. 4K gaming is impractical: even with upscaling, FPS rarely exceeds 30 frames.

4. Professional Tasks: Not the Main Specialization

Video Editing:

In DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, CUDA acceleration speeds up rendering, but 4 GB of memory limits work with 4K materials.

3D Modeling:

In Blender, rendering on CUDA is stable but slower compared to RTX cards. It’s sufficient for educational projects.

Scientific Calculations:

Support for OpenCL and CUDA allows the card to be used in low-budget research systems, but its power is only suitable for basic tasks.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP 85W: Powered by PCIe Slot

The card does not require additional 6/8-pin connectors, making it easier to build in compact cases.

Cooling:

- Reference Models: Passive or single-slot coolers are suitable for office PCs.

- Gaming Versions: Dual-fan systems (from ASUS, MSI) keep temperatures down to 65–70°C under load.

Case Recommendations: At least 1–2 intake fans to prevent overheating.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (4 GB GDDR6):

- Pros: Support for FSR 3.1, lower price (~$150).

- Cons: Weak performance without FSR, PCIe 4.0 x4 limits speed on older PCs.

Intel Arc A380 (6 GB GDDR6):

- Pros: More VRAM, supports XeSS.

- Cons: Drivers are still less stable than NVIDIA's.

Conclusion: The GTX 1650 TU116 excels over competitors in stability and energy efficiency but falls short in memory capacity.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply: A 350–400W power supply is sufficient (e.g., EVGA 400 W1).

Compatibility:

- Works on PCIe 3.0 (no performance loss due to x16 interface).

- Supports Windows 11/Linux, but insufficient power for new APIs (DirectStorage).

Drivers:

- Regular updates from NVIDIA, but optimization for new games is gradually decreasing.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Silent models for office PCs.

- Stable drivers.

Cons:

- 4 GB VRAM is insufficient for modern games.

- No hardware Ray Tracing.

- Limited performance at 1440p.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the GTX 1650 TU116 For?

This graphics card is suitable for:

1. Budget gamers playing less demanding or older titles.

2. Office PCs with occasional rendering tasks.

3. Upgrading old systems without replacing the power supply.

In 2025, the GTX 1650 TU116 remains a niche solution. If your goal is comfortable gaming on new releases at high settings, consider looking at the RTX 3050 or RX 6600. But for its price, this model still finds its enthusiasts.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 TU116 is an example of a "surviving" budget card in an era of teraflop GPUs costing $500. It reminds us that sometimes a modest and time-tested technology can be more advantageous than the pursuit of ultra-settings.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

July 2020

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1650 TU116

Generation

GeForce 16

Base Clock

1410MHz

Boost Clock

1590MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

6,600 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1500MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

192.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

50.88 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

89.04 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

5.699 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

89.04 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

2.792 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

896

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

80W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

7.5

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.792 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro P2000 Mobile

3.033 +8.6%

GeForce GTX 1650 TU106

2.906 +4.1%

GeForce GTX 1650 TU116

2.792

FireStream 9370

2.693 -3.5%

Radeon HD 6990

2.601 -6.8%