PC World - USA (2020-01)

JANUARY 2020 PCWorld 67

option for 1080p gaming.
While its still-available non-Super
predecessor failed to make a dent versus
AMD’s ancient, yet value-packed Radeon RX
500-series, the GeForce GTX 1650 Super
equals or surpasses the Radeon RX 580’s
performance in every game but Strange
Brigade, while proving far superior in power

efficiency. That helps it run much cooler and

quieter than AMD’s options.

Nvidia’s graphics card can hit a

comfortable 60 frames per second with most if

not all graphics settings maxed out, even in

modern games. You might need to drop some

especially strenuous games down to High, but

that’s still great for a $160 GPU. It’s got Nvidia’s

latest and greatest Turing

NVENC encoder, too, a boon

for streamers and video editors.

Given how much more

efficient the GeForce GTX 1650

is, we’d opt for it over the

Radeon RX 580 every time.

AMD’s game bundles and deals

might sway you to Team Red,

though. At the moment, Radeon

cards offer three free months of

Microsoft’s superb Xbox Game

Pass for PC (go.pcworld.com/

xbgp), as well as your choice of

either Borderlands 3 (go.

pcworld.com/bdl3) or Ghost

Recon Breakpoint (go.pcworld.

com/grcp). We found both

those games ho-hum, but it’s a

compelling offer if you planned

on picking up either title anyway.

With Game Pass you won’t need

to splurge on any games for a

while. Still, Microsoft’s

subscription gaming service is

cheap enough—$1 for the first

Whole system power draw

(Watts)

SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

52.1

57.1

54.2

59.3

207

255

311

229

332

Load Idle

Gigabyte Aorus

Radeon RX 570

Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1650 Super

Asus ROG Strix Radeon RX 580

EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC Ultra

XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy

63

Max GPU temperature under load

(Celsius)

SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

72

55

63

58

81

Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1650 Super

Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 570

Asus ROG Strix Radeon RX 580

EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC Ultra

XFX Radeon

RX 590 Fatboy