GeForce GTX 1650 Super is NVIDIA's latest addition to their Turing product stack. The new card is based on the same TU116 GPU that powers GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Super, whereas the original GTX 1650 is powered by TU117. This change was required because TU117 only has 1024 shaders in silicon, which isn't enough to reach the performance targets NVIDIA has set for their new card, to conclusively beat AMD's Radeon RX 5500. With 1,280 shaders, or +40% more than GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Super promises a huge performance boost, which is crucial to reach those 60 FPS at Full HD.

Palit's GeForce GTX 1650 Super Storm X OC is the highest-clocked GTX 1650 Super on the market. It ticks at 1770 MHz boost, which is a 45 MHz increase over the NVIDIA reference clocks. Looking at overall performance at 1080p Full HD, we're seeing dramatic performance improvements over the GTX 1650 non-Super. The GTX 1650 Super is 37% faster, which is much better than everyone expected I think. Not only the increased shader count plays a role here, but NVIDIA upgrading the memory to GDDR6 makes a difference, too, as available memory bandwidth is increased by 50%, for only a minor increase in manufacturing cost. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 is 11% faster than the GTX 1650 Super, and the GTX 1660 Super is 24% ahead. Last generation's most popular card, the GTX 1060 is 9% slower than GTX 1650 Super. Things aren't looking good for AMD, the GTX 1650 Super beats the Radeon RX 580, delivering 5% higher performance, and the more expensive Radeon RX 590 is only 5% faster. We received a Radeon RX 5500 today and managed to squeeze in its results, too. Against the RX 5500, the Palit StormX OC is 7% faster, which makes this an important win for NVIDIA, but AMD pricing isn't finalized yet, so they could get their revenge. Overall, we can easily recommend GTX 1650 Super as a great choice for gaming at Full HD 1080p in all titles.

Palit's thermal solution is a simple cost-effective design, that still achieves very good temperatures, that are surprisingly low given the cooler's looks. With 63°C, the cards runs just a tiny bit warmer than the MSI Gaming X, which has a much larger cooler. In our initial testing I complained that noise levels are too high — Palit listened to my feedback and sent me an updated BIOS that reduces fan speed in both idle and gaming. Idle noise levels are decent now, barely audible, even though I'd definitely prefer a proper implementation of fan-stop. Gaming noise is "acceptable" with 36 dBA, but could easily be much lower, considering temps are so low. It wouldn't hurt to allow a few °C more, and improve noise levels even further. For example, I manually set fan speed to 45%, which increased temperatures by 3°C, up to 66°C, yet reduces acoustics by 4 dBA, to only 32 dBA — definitely worth it. Unfortunately there's no backplate installed on Palit's GTX 1650 Super Storm X, it seems meeting NVIDIA MSRP is tough, I talked to various board partners and they tell me that they're making "no money, due to NV pricing," which would explain such cost cutting measures.

I do like the compact design of the Palit card, which ensures it will fit into all cases, even smaller SFF variants. The only thing that concerns me slightly is that the power connector is facing upwards, which can limit compatibility with the most compact cases. What's a little bit surprising is that neither the VRM nor the memory chips are cooled, but since the card overclocks very well, especially the memory. I'm not sure if there is much reason for concern.

Like all other Turing GPUs, performance per watt of the GTX 1650 Super is excellent, and we did not expect anything else. 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 Polaris cards. What's noteworthy here is that non-gaming power consumption is extremely low. Especially multi-monitor at 7 W and 4K media playback at 8 W open up a lot of use cases for the card. Gaming power draw clocked in at roughly 100 W, which is great, too, as it ensures pretty much any PSU out there will be able to run the GTX 1650 Super. This is an important factor because NVIDIA wants people to upgrade their prebuilt gaming PCs, and these often come with weak power supplies of questionable quality. Unfortunately, Palit did not increase their card's power limit over the NVIDIA default of 100 W, which could have yielded additional extra performance.

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, especially on the GDDR6 memory chips. We went from 1500 MHz to 1900 MHz, which is a 27% increase! GPU overclocking potential is more limited because the factory OC eats into the headroom. Still, overall, we gained more than 10% in real-life performance, which boosts the card well above RX 590 FPS levels.

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.

NVIDIA has positioned their new GTX 1650 Super very aggressively. With an MSRP of $160, the card is priced similarly to AMD's aging Radeon RX 580, yet offers better performance, noise, and thermals. The Radeon RX 590 is $190 at the moment, down from its launch price of $280—I'd rather buy the GTX 1650 Super. AMD announced Radeon RX 5500 a while ago, but market availability, or even just pricing, is nowhere in sight. We charted several price points for the RX 5500, and it looks like they'll have to sell their card at $160 or below to be competitive.

We have three GTX 1650 Super reviews today: MSI GTX 1650 Super Gaming X, Zotac GTX 1650 Super Twin Fan, Palit GTX 1650 Super StormX OC. The full Radeon RX 5500 review has been posted, too.