68 PCWorld JANUARY 2020REVIEWS ASUS ROG STRIX GEFORCE GTX 1650 SUPER
month, and $9 per month thereafter—that we’d
still generally recommend the GTX 1650 Super.
If the slightly faster Radeon RX 590 drops
down to the GTX 1650 Super’s price range,
though, it’s worth considering if you don’t
mind its awful power efficiency. And if you
don’t mind dialing down graphics options a
bit, the Radeon RX 570 with all those free
games are still worth considering at just $120
to $130 on sale—and we’ve even seen it as
low as $100 i (go.pcworld.com/r570) n the
lead-up to Black Friday. That’s ludicrous. In
general though, you’re getting a lot more
performance out of the GTX 1650 Super for
just $30 or so more.
Moving onto the $170 Asus ROG Strix
GeForce GTX 1650 Super specifically, we can’t
recommend it highly enough. It’s a well-built,
attractive, and borderline silent version of a
great graphics card, loaded with premium
features like a metal backplate, customizable
RGB lighting, idle fan stop, dual BIOSs, a
significant factory overclock, ports galore, and
a fan header that ties control of one of your
case fans to your GPU temperature. For a mere
$10 premium? It’s a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, the ROG Strix (go.pcworld.
com/165s) isn’t available at retail at the time
of publication. Two other Asus GPUS— the
$165 GeForce GTX 1650 Super Phoenix Fan
Edition (go.pcworld.com/phnx and $160
Asus TUF GTX 1650 Super (go.pcworld.com/
atuf)—are, and you should expect similar
bottom-line gaming performance out ofthem, though these alternatives don’t pack all
the same extras as the Strix.
Wrapping it up, the Nvidia GeForce GTX
1650 Super is the best budget graphics card
you can buy for 1080p gaming, and the Asus
ROG Strix is a sterling custom version of it with
a barely-there price premium. Both come
highly recommended. It remains to be seen
how long they hold onto the crown, though,
as AMD’s Radeon RX 5500-series graphics
cards (go.pcworld.com/nav1) are scheduled
to launch sometime this quarter, built using the
next-gen Navi architecture with support for
GDDR6 and PCIe 4.0. We know they’re
targeting 1080p gaming for the masses, but
pricing and performance still remain a mystery.
For now, Nvidia can take a much-
deserved victory lap. Hail to the new budget
gaming champion.Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX
1650 SuperPROS- Great 1080p performance at a great price.
- Vastly cooler, quiet, and more power-efficient than
Radeon GPUs. - Loaded with extra features.
CONS - Doesn’t move performance much past aging
Radeon RX 580. - 2.4-slot Strix design is slightly thick.
BOTTOM LINE
Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1650 Super is the best
budget graphics card you can buy for 1080p
gaming, and the custom Asus ROG Strix model is
loaded with extras for a mere $10 premium.
$170