HWM Singapore – June 2019

The ASUS ROG Strix

GeForce GTX 1650

Gaming OC is a dual-fan

model that boasts ASUS’

DirectCU II cooler and IP5X

dust resistance. It’s a little on

the beefy side for a card with

a TDP of just 75W, which is

both a good and bad thing.

The additional features drive

up the price of the card,

and while the more robust

feature set is certainly nice,

the fact remains that it can

sometimes push the price of

the card outside the budget

of its intended audience.

That said, the ROG Strix

GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming

OC off ers much of what

ASUS’ other ROG Strix cards

do. This includes semi-

passive fans that will stop

spinning when the GPU

The card has two HDMI 2.0b and

two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs.

temperature falls below

55°C, Aura Sync RGB lighting,

and a single FanConnect II

4-pin header. There’s a metal

backplate as well, which

helps protect the PCB and

conveys a more premium

feel to the card.

The power delivery

subsystem comprises of a

4+1-phase design and solid

polymer capacitors and

7.5 /10

TESTED&RATED

SINGAPORE

ATA GLANCE

BASE/BOOST

CLOCK

1,485MHz/1,860MHz

(OCMode)

CUDACORES

896

VIDEO

MEMORY

4GBGDDR5

MEMORY

BANDWIDTH

128GB/s

TDP

75W

PRICE

US$179

CONCLUSION

Good budget performance weighed

down by too many unnecessary features.

alloy chokes that ASUS says

will last longer and won’t

produce annoying buzzing

noises. In addition, the card

is manufactured using the

company’s Auto-Extreme

Technology, which basically

relies on automation

for better reliability and

consistency.

However, while NVIDIA’s

reference design technically

doesn’t require an external

power connector, ASUS has

included a single 6-pin PCIe

connector anyway.

The TU116 GPU that the

GeForce GTX 1650 uses is a

smaller variant of the TU117

chip in the GeForce GTX 1660

and 1660 Ti. And while it

features most of the bene ts

of the Turing architecture,

it’s missing the new NVENC

video encoder that the other

Turing cards have. Instead,

NVIDIA has slipped in the

older Volta NVENC encoder,

which means you don’t get

the 15 per cent boost in

effi ciency and new features

to avoid artifacting.

Given its target audience,

I can’t really call it a bad

card, even if it really looks

lackluster compared to

the other Turing cards. For

instance, it manages just

54.6 fps in Deus Ex: Mankind

Divided at High settings.

NVIDIA wants to create

a card for everyone, and

eventually it’s going to reach

a point where it’s simply

impossible to be wowed by

the performance numbers

anymore. The GeForce GTX

1650 feels like it’s at that

point, and it’s really the card

you look to when you’re on

a shoestring budget. Having

said that, if you can wait,

you’ll be much better served

if you save up and get the

GeForce GTX 1660 or 1660 Ti.

But speci cally for this

ASUS card, the budget GPU

is paired with a bunch of

premium features that no

one really needs, like the

FanConnect II header (do

you really need an extra

fan header in a system

with a 75W card?), dual-fan

cooler, and metal backplate.

Ultimately, that’s driven its

price up to a point where

it’s no longer justi ed by the

performance you’ll get.

JUNE 2019 | HWM 69