PC World - USA (2020-01)

66 PCWorld JANUARY 2020

REVIEWS ASUS ROG STRIX GEFORCE GTX 1650 SUPER

GTA V

We’re going to wrap things up with a game that

isn’t really a visual barn-burner, but still tops the

Steam charts day in and day out. We test Grand

Theft Auto V ($30 on Humble at go.pcworld.

com/gta5) with all options turned to Very High,

all Advanced Graphics options except

extended shadows enabled, and FXAA. GTA V

runs on the RAGE engine and has received

substantial updates since its initial launch.

POWER DRAW, THERMALS,

AND NOISE

We test power draw by looping the F1 2018

benchmark for about 20 minutes after we’ve

benchmarked everything else and noting the

highest reading on our Watts Up Pro meter.

The initial part of the race, where all

competing cars are onscreen simultaneously,

tends to be the most demanding portion.

It’s no contest here. Nvidia’s

power-sipping Turing

architecture blows away AMD’s

ancient Polaris GPUs, delivering

performance on a par with the

Radeon RX 580 for over 100

watts less. The GeForce GTX

1650 Super even stays well

below the Radeon RX 570’s

energy draw, despite firmly

outpunching it.

We test thermals by leaving

either AMD’s Wattman (for

Radeon GPUs) or EVGA’s

Precision X1 (for GeForce GPUs) open during

the F1 2018 five-lap power draw test, noting

the highest maximum temperature at the end.

Here’s where that vastly superior power

efficiency comes into play. Both the GTX 1650

and the Radeon RX 580 we tested performed

similarly, and both versions were killer ROG

Strix variants—but the bulky triple-fan cooler on

the RX 580 is much, much larger. Nonetheless,

the tinier dual-fan ROG Strix GTX 1650 Super

manages to stay cooler by a full 8 degrees

Celsius, while running next to silent. This is a

great GPU in a great graphics card.

SHOULD YOU BUY THE

NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX

1650 SUPER?

Definitely. The $160 Nvidia GeForce GTX

1650 Super is the best budget graphics card

you can buy—at least for now. It’s a killer

GTA V

(Frames per second)

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

61.92

67.53

61.25

80.98

63.96

73.41

85.69

80.01

1080p 1440p

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

50.93