NVIDIA announced the updated GTX 1650 with GDDR6 memory just three weeks ago. Their reason this time wasn't to go "SUPER" against the competition, but, rather, a logistics issue. With GDDR6 as the de-facto standard for graphics cards nowadays, memory manufacturers are shifting production away from GDDR5, which is getting more and more difficult to source. A portion of the global production is gobbled up by Xbox and PlayStation gaming consoles, but those might be out of production soon, too, with next-gen releasing later this year. That's why NVIDIA has created this new SKU, to ensure they can continue producing GTX 1650 cards.

Other than memory, nothing has changed. The TU117 graphics processor has native support for both GDDR5 and GDDR6, so a new GPU wasn't required. All major specifications are the same too: VRAM size, ROPs, TMUs, and shaders. The only difference is in the GPU clock frequencies which have been reduced a bit. While the GTX 1650 GDDR5 reference ticked at 1485 MHz base and 1665 MHz Boost, the new GDDR6 SKU runs at 1410 MHz base and 1590 MHz Boost, so around 5% lower. This doesn't seem to be an evil plot by NVIDIA, but, rather, a necessity to keep the whole card within the 75 W limit for it run on slot power only safely. Good that Gigabyte has overclocked their card out of the box to a rated boost of 1635 MHz, which is still 30 MHz below the GDDR5 model reference clocks.

When averaged over all our benchmarks at 1080p resolution, we see the Gigabyte GTX 1650 OC GDDR6 7% faster than the GTX 1650 GDDR5. The new GDDR6 memory chips with +50% memory bandwidth definitely help. This means the card roughly matches the GTX 1060 3 GB and ends up 4% slower than the aging Radeon RX 570. RX 580 is 21% faster, and GTX 1650 Super is 25% faster. AMD's recently released Radeon RX 5500 XT is 23% faster. This means the GTX 1650 GDDR6 is still the slowest current-generation card on the market, which doesn't mean it's too slow for gaming, though. Looking at our FPS results at maximum "ultra" settings, around half the titles reach 60 FPS or more. If you are willing to sacrifice some details in the most demanding games, you'll be able to achieve fluid 60 FPS gaming at Full HD with the GTX 1650 GDDR6. The problem is that there are other options on the market that are faster, but similarly priced or even cheaper. More on that later.

Gigabyte's cooler is as basic as it gets, just a single fan and a heatsink without heatpipes. This of course has a negative effect on temperatures. However, they top out at 74°C, which is fine. The drawback here is that fan noise is a bit high. With 34 dBA, the card is definitely louder than some more premium solutions (Gigabyte has a dual-fan WindForce SKU, too). Those noise levels are definitely far from "inaudible", but they are still acceptable. What's very unfortunate is that the card lacks the idle-fan-stop capability that has almost become a standard nowadays—people really love the noiseless experience during desktop work and Internet browsing. In idle, the fan is audible; had Gigabyte chosen lower fan RPMs for that state, it could be much quieter without any significant increase in temperatures. AMD's Radeon RX 5500 XT is similarly priced, yet most cards that we've tested have idle fan stop and run significantly quieter in gaming—nearly inaudible.

I do like the compact design of the Gigabyte card, which ensures it will fit into all cases, even smaller SFF variants. Since it doesn't use an additional power connector, you won't have to mess with cabling in a small case, or when running with a weaker power supply. However, this means the card is limited to 75 W power, which does limit performance somewhat. Back when GDDR6 was announced we were promised reduced power consumption, and that is true as long as you compare at the same Gbps speed (not MHz clock signal). When comparing the GTX 1650, we have 8 Gbps (GDDR5) vs. 12 Gbps (GDDR6) memory, which actually increases the memory power consumption a little bit, but you get higher performance in return, of course. When looking at performance per watt, we find the GDDR6 SKU to be a little bit less energy efficient than the GDDR5 model, but only by a small percentage. It is still a highly efficient design, better than all higher-end Turing and AMD cards ever released.

While manual overclocking is complicated a bit due to the power limiter, because you can no longer dial in a specific frequency, we saw excellent OC results on the GDDR6 memory chips. We went from 1500 MHz to 1885 MHz, which is a 26% increase! GPU overclocking was held back by the power limiter; we still achieved a 2% OC, which resulted in a 9% real-life performance increase. Gigabyte locked down their BIOS, so manually increasing the power limit is not possible.

Video memory size of 4 GB might sound low at first, but you have to consider that pricing matters a lot in this segment. Adding more memory would make the card more expensive with little or no performance difference at 1080p Full HD. Looking at our performance numbers, we can definitely see reduced FPS at 4K resolution compared to cards with more memory, but I'm not seeing anything in our data that would suggest these cards are memory-bound at 1080p. We're running maximum details, including optional HD texture packs when available, so there are lots of options to reduce memory requirements should it come to that. I rather buy a more affordable card now than waste money on future-proofing, at least in this segment.

The biggest problem of the GTX 1650, both with GDDR5 and GDDR6, is price. At $175 for the Gigabyte GTX 1650 OC GDDR6, there are several good alternatives available. If you are willing to spend just a little bit more, the GTX 1650 Super offers 25% higher performance—really a no-brainer. Another great alternative is the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which starts at $180 with a similar performance uplift and much quieter coolers, especially the Sapphire Pulse is a good choice here. If you are willing to buy used, then the Radeon RX 570 or RX 580 are definitely worth a look as they are being sold off at bargain prices because people are upgrading. Yes, they don't have the latest tech and draw more power, but they are still compatible with all new games, which would help you pass the time until next-gen becomes available.