NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Budget Turing GPU Rumored To Launch In March
In an effort to sell more GPUs, it is widely believed that NVIDIA is getting ready to launch new Turing cards that lack RT and Tensor cores, recycling its previous generation "GTX" designation in the process. Most of the chatter, however, has been on the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GeForce GTX 1660. Those may not be the only new GTX cards on the horizon, though—there could be a GeForce GTX 1650 right around the corner as well.
As with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GeForce GTX 1660, the GeForce GTX 1650 presumably features a Turing GPU underneath the hood. Also like those cards, the lack of certain hardware means it will not be capable of real-time ray tracing or Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), both of which are premium RTX features.
There is not a lot of leaked information about the card at this point, though rumor has it the new part could launch in late March. If so, that time frame would give the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GeForce GTX 1660 a few weeks on the market without a cheaper Turing-based alternative.
The specs are a bit of a mystery as well. Prior leaks point to the GeForce GTX 1650 having 4GB of GDDR5 memory and a 128-bit bus, but there has not been any mention of CUDA cores, Texture Units, or clockspeeds.
For reference, here are the rumored specs of the other two upcoming GTX cards:
- GeForce GTX 1660 Ti: 1,536 CUDA cores, 96 Texture Units, 1,500MHz base clock, 1,770MHz boost clock, 6GB GDDR6 memory, 192-bit memory bus, 6,000MHz memory clock
- GeForce GTX 1660: 1,280 CUDA cores, 80 Texture Units, 1,530MHz base clock, 1,785MHz boost clock, 6GB GDDR5 memory, 192-bit memory bus, 4,000MHz memory clock
- GeForce GTX 1650: unknown CUDA cores,
The GeForce GTX 1650 will be more of a budget solution for gamers, compared to the higher end models. While obviously not confirmed, pricing is said to be $179, versus $279 and $229 for the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and non-Ti, respectively.
We'll have to wait and see how performance shakes out. These cards will need to offer enough of a performance boost over Pascal to warrant their existence, while being priced around the same (or even cheaper) as well.
There is also the used graphics card market to consider, though one advantage these new cards will have is that buyers will know they have been used for cryptocurrency mining. Buying a used Pascal card runs the risk of ending up with a part that has been going full throttle for an extended period of time.
