NVIDIA's new GTX 1650 is built around the TU117, their smallest graphics processor. It features all the improvements of the Turing architecture, like larger caches, concurrent execution of float and integer operations, and adaptive/variable-rate shading. What's missing (like on all other GeForce 16-series cards) is support for RTX real-time raytracing and DLSS, which have been removed to save on chip area, reducing cost.

MSI overclocked their card to a rated boost clock of 1860 MHz out of the box, which is one of the largest overclocks of all the GTX 1650 cards—the highest is for the EVGA XC Ultra with 1875 MHz, which is not that much higher. Unfortunately, memory isn't overclocked even though the chips can certainly take it as our manual overclocking results show. Averaged over all our benchmarks at 1080p, the MSI GTX 1650 Gaming X is 35% faster than the GTX 1050 Ti and 9% behind the Radeon RX 570. This makes the card 11% slower than even the GTX 1060 3 GB and 25% slower than the GTX 1060 6 GB, and puts it a whopping 49% behind the GTX 1660 (the next step up in the Turing product stack). This is strong evidence NVIDIA will release a GTX 1650 Ti to fill that hole in their lineup. With those performance levels, the GTX 1650 is not good enough for 60 FPS gaming at 1080p with highest details, but you should be able reach that FPS rate in most games with reduced details.

MSI's cooler is a large dual-slot, dual-fan design that does an outstanding job at keeping the card cool. With only 63°C under load, the card runs very cool and extremely quiet at the same time. Gaming noise levels of 29 dBA mean the card will be inaudible in any case as long as there is another actively cooled component. MSI also included the highly popular fan-stop feature which shuts the fans off completely during idle, Internet browsing, and light gaming. With those noise levels, the card will make an excellent candidate for a low-noise living room computer.

Like all other Turing GPUs, power efficiency of the GTX 1650 is excellent. Compared to cards like the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti, gaming power efficiency is similar—more than twice as efficient as AMD's Radeon RX 570! What's noteworthy here is that non-gaming power consumption has been improved once again; with just 4 W, the card delivers the lowest idle power consumption levels we've ever seen. Power draw during gaming is also very well behaved and only reaches 71 W, which ensures that any power supply will be able to handle this card. Unlike the NVIDIA reference design, which uses PCIe slot power only, MSI has added an additional 6-pin power connector and raised the board power limit. While its power input configuration allows for up to 150 W power draw in theory, MSI has set their power limit to 85 W, which isn't that much higher than the 75 W of the reference design. We do see the card peak up to 91 W in Furmark, so the 6-pin does have some use.

Overclocking of the GTX 1650 works very nicely, especially for the memory. We achieved a 23% memory overclock, which helps make up lost ground vs. AMD's Radeon RX 570 that doesn't overclock nearly as well. Overall performance gained from overclocking the MSI GTX 1650 Gaming X is 16%.

MSI is pricing their GTX 1650 Gaming X at "$150-$160", which is only a small increase and very reasonable. In return, you get a much better cooler that is really quiet, idle fan-stop, a large overclock out of the box, and an increased power limit. However, at that price point, the GTX 1650 is simply way too expensive. AMD's Radeon RX 570 can be found online for $130 and offers significantly higher performance. MSI isn't to blame for this as the problem is simply NVIDIA setting their MSRP much too high. A more realistic price point for the GTX 1650 would be $120, at which point it would achieve price/performance parity with the Radeon RX 570. Compared to AMD's RX 570, NVIDIA's GTX 1650 definitely wins with impressive power efficiency and better temperature and noise levels, but pricing is just too high for that to matter. It also faces strong competition from NVIDIA's own GTX 1060 series, which offers similar or better performance and can be found used for bargain prices. Another competitor is the GTX 1660, which is faster and actually has a 5% better price/performance ratio than the GTX 1650.