Introduction

NVIDIA announced the GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card almost a year ago, on April 23rd 2019. It is the smallest and most affordable implementation of the "Turing" architecture. Much like other GeForce GTX 16-series graphics cards, the GTX 1650 lacks dedicated RTX real-time ray tracing hardware and tensor cores even though it is based on "Turing."

The GeForce GTX 1650 uses the tiny TU117 silicon from NVIDIA, which is configured with 896 CUDA cores, 56 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 4 GB of memory that ticks at 8 Gbps for 128 GB/s bandwidth. Not long ago, such specifications were considered quasi-premium for this price segment. With a rated power draw of just 75 watts—half that of the RX 570—most GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards do not need an additional PCIe power connector and can make do with slot power only.



That's exactly why Palit chose the GTX 1650 for their KalmX—a lineup that has been around for many years, offering a completely passive, fanless operation. The first KalmX was the Palit GTX 750 Ti KalmX in 2014, followed by the GTX 1050 Ti KalmX in 2017.

Building a completely passive card is not easy because the heatsink needs to be able to absorb and dissipate all the heat output from GPU and memory—a highly efficient GPU architecture is needed. Even with Turing's leading efficiency, this puts serious constraints on how powerful the card can be. I'm sure Palit would have loved to use a GTX 1650 Super as the base for their KalmX, but that's simply not feasible with 100 W of heat output. The GTX 1650 on the other hand is around 70 W, the perfect candidate from among currently available GPUs.

On the regular graphics card market, the GTX 1650 has been superseded by the GTX 1650 Super, which offers considerably higher performance at only a small price increase.

As expected, the Palit GTX 1650 KalmX does not come with a factory overclock and also uses the NVIDIA default power limit of 75 W, which not only limits heat output, but ensures it doesn't need an additional power connector—something that's important for some small-form-factor systems. The Palit GTX 1650 KalmX is currently retailing at around $160, which is a $10 premium over the NVIDIA MSRP and definitely reasonable.