Nvidia just launched their new GTX 1650 graphics card, but how does it compare with the older
GTX 1050 Ti? In this video we’ll test out and compare 18 different games at 1080p and
1440p resolutions to help you see the performance difference between them, followed by a discussion
on value and if it’s worth it.
Let’s quickly take a look at how the newer GTX 1650 and older GTX 1050 Ti actually differ
in terms of specs, note that these are base model specs, different cards will vary slightly.
The 1650 has 16% more CUDA cores and is based on Nvidia’s newer Turing architecture. The
1650 also has higher base and boost clock speeds, and while both have 4GB of GDDR5 memory,
the 1650’s appears to be a little faster.
For the testing I’m using the Gigabyte GTX 1650 OC and the MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X,
so both have a little factory overclock, expect slightly different results with different
models.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5.0GHz in
an MSI Z390 ACE motherboard, along with 16GB of T-Force Night Hawk CL16 memory from Team
Group running at DDR4-3200 in dual channel. Check the links in the description for details
on all of the components as well as for up to date pricing. The same Windows updates,
game updates and Nvidia driver 430.39 were used for the testing, so let’s get into
the results.
Let’s start out Apex Legends, which was tested with all settings maxed out. I’ve
tested with higher settings in the upcoming games than I’d actually play with in most
cases, as that’s better for GPU comparison purposes. In all upcoming graphs I’ve got
the GTX 1650 shown by the top bar in red, while the older GTX 1050 Ti is shown below
in purple. In terms of average FPS the 1650 was 32% ahead of the 1050 Ti at 1080p, rising
up to a 37% improvement at 1440p.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark using high settings,
and as expected the 1650 was ahead here, performing 30% better at 1080p over the 1050 Ti then
slightly higher at 32% at 1440p, while even the 1% lows from the 1650 were above the averages
from the 1050 Ti.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. At 1080p the 1650 was 27% ahead of the 1050 Ti
here, rising to 31% at 1440p. Due to the high 1% low I think you could actually get away
with the 1650 at 1440p, though maybe turn down the settings to medium.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested using the built in benchmark with high settings, and was another
game where even the 1% lows from the 1650 were ahead of the averages from the 1050 Ti.
At both 1080p and 1440p the 1650 was 25% ahead of the 1050 Ti in this test.
Far Cry 5 was also tested using the built in benchmark with high settings, and this
game was seeing higher FPS over the newer Far Cry New Dawn just shown. For average frame
rate there was a 24% boost at both 1080p and 1440p with the 1650.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature with the exact same replay on both graphics
cards. The 1050 Ti was still able to reach 60 FPS averages at 1080p even with epic settings
in use, however the 1650 was 20.5% ahead here, lowing to a 13.7% lead at 1440p.
Metro Exodus was tested with the built in benchmark at high settings. The actual game
performs a fair bit ahead of this, so this is more of a synthetic test rather than representative
of actual game play, but it does allow me to accurately compare between the two graphics
cards. With that in mind, the 1650 was 30% ahead of the 1050 Ti at 1080p, and 28% ahead
at 1440p.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested using the built in benchmark with high settings.
This seems to be more of a graphically intensive test, as out of all games tested it saw the
largest improvement at 1440p of 41.6% and 3rd largest improvement at 1080p out of all
18 games tested with 34% higher average FPS over the 1050 Ti.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested using the built in benchmark at high settings. This is a game
that I’ve found to perform better with Nvidia’s newer turing architecture, and it was seeing
quite a nice improvement with the 1650, with 33.5% higher average FPS over the 1050 Ti
at 1080p, and a 35% boost at 1440p.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and both cards were capable of providing very
high frame rates in this test, granted the 8700K is of course contributing a lot here
too. This game saw one of the smallest differences between the two graphics cards, with just
a 11.5% improvement at 1080p with the 1650, and a 10.6% improvement at 1440p,
Overwatch was tested in the practice range as I can easily perform the same test run
compared to playing with bots or other players which will differ every time. While both were
giving fairly good frame rates considering the highest epic setting preset was in use
even at 1440p, like CS:GO there was less of a difference between the two. At 1080p we’re
looking at a 13% improvement with the 1650, lowering to 10% faster at 1440p.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature with the exact same replay at high settings, and
the 1650 was needed to hit the 60 FPS sweet spot at 1080p here. In terms of differences
the 1650 was reaching 30.7% higher average FPS than the 1050 Ti at 1080p, and 34.7% higher
at 1440p. The 1650 was also giving massive improvements to 1% low too, with a 44% increase
at 1080p and 37% at 1440p.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource intensive game and was tested with very high settings. In
my opinion this one doesn’t need a high frame rate to play, I can get by with a solid
30 FPS, so I wouldn’t want to use 1440p here though it would probably be fine with
high or lower settings. Anyway in terms of differences the 1% lows from the 1650 were
again above the averages provided by the 1050 Ti, while at 1080p the 1650 was 18% ahead
of the 1050 Ti in average FPS, and 16.7% ahead at 1440p.
Ghost Recon was tested with the built in benchmark and high settings in use, and is another resource
heavy game. At 1080p the 1650 was 23.6% ahead of the 1050 Ti in average FPS, lowering to
a 17.5% lead at 1440p.
The Witcher 3 was tested with Hairworks disabled. At 1080p the 1650 was achieving 25% higher
average frame rates over the 1050 Ti, lowering again to 22% at 1440p, although at 1440p there
was a much larger 59% boost to 1% low.
Strange Brigade was tested with the built in benchmark using Vulkan with Async compute
enabled maxed out at ultra settings. At 1080p the 1650 was seeing its largest improvement
out of all 18 games tested with 37% higher average FPS over the 1050 Ti, and also a 37%
improvement at 1440p, coming in at second place out of 18 at this resolution.
DOOM was also tested using Vulkan, and there was quite a big difference in this game too.
At 1080p the 1650 was 31% ahead of the 1050 Ti, rising up to a 36% boost at 1440p, while
the 1% lows from the 1650 were above the averages from the 1050 Ti.
Shadow of War was tested with the built in benchmark, and like Rainbow Six is another
game I’ve found to benefit from Nvidia’s Turing architecture. At 1080p it came in at
second place with 34% higher average FPS over the 1050 Ti, and 35% higher at 1440p.
In terms of overall improvement, over all 18 games tested with a 1080p resolution on
average the GTX 1650 was performing 26.7% better when compared with the GTX 1050 Ti
in terms of average FPS. As we can see it really depends on the specific game, esports
titles like CS:GO, Overwatch and Fortnite for example were closer towards the bottom.
At 1440p on average over the same 18 games the GTX 1650 was now scoring just a little
higher on average compared to the 1080p results just shown, now with 27.1% higher average
FPS. Again there’s no major differences to those esports titles down the bottom of
the graph, while more GPU demanding games were seeing larger improvements. It’s worth
noting though that I don’t consider either of these 1440p capable cards in the majority
of games tested, I just wanted to see how the resolution would affect the percentage
difference as it should be more GPU intensive when compared with 1080p.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of synthetic benchmarks, I’ve just tested
3DMark’s Firestrike, Timespy and VRMark here. I’ll note that in Timespy with the
1650 I did have some black screen flickering which some others have reported, so I’m
not 100% certain whether that affected results.
As for the differences in total system power draw the 1650 was only slightly ahead, so
it is at least good to see that not that much extra power is required here for a fair boost
in performance.
Now let’s look at one of the main reasons I was interested in making this video. I saw
Nvidia tweet this image the other day showing the performance boosts to expect from their
1650 graphics, and rather than take them at face value I wanted to see if I could work
out just how accurate and honest they’re being. In typical Nvidia fashion they’re
not providing the exact frame rates, so we’re not off to a good start, but we can extrapolate
the information to get a rough idea. They do note that they’re using an 8700K system
with 16GB of memory at 1080p, and while no exact speeds are given that’s quite similar
to my setup.
So how did my results compare to Nvidia’s claims? PUBG seems pretty easy to work out,
60 FPS at 1080p in their 1650 test and it looks like around 46 or 47 FPS for the 1050
Ti, just 2-3 FPS below my results. That would mean Nvidia are claiming a 30.4% performance
increase, and well as we saw I was seeing almost a 31% boost, so that’s looking about
right.
In Fortnite as best I can tell here, Nvidia are showing 59 FPS with the 1050 Ti and 74
FPS with the 1650, again fairly close to my results, though resulting in a 25% improvement
with the 1650, which is a little above my 20.5% difference.
Rainbow Six Siege on the other hand I feel is a bit of a best case result though, I’ve
noted in many comparisons that the game seems to perform noticeably better with Nvidia’s
new Turing cards over Pascal. In any case though I wasn’t quite seeing the big difference
they’ve got here. Looks like the 1050 Ti is around maybe 45 FPS, about in the center
of the 30 and 60 FPS points, while the 1650 appears to be around 70 FPS, which gives it
a massive 59% improvement if I’m right. At 1080p I saw a 33.5% increase on the 1650,
however I was using the built in benchmark. Steve at Hardware Unboxed tests this game
in actual game play, and even if we use his numbers there was a 46% difference, so I’m
not too sure how Nvidia got that one, I presume different parts of the game would give different
results, though even in all of my 18 game tests I was nowhere near close to a 59% improvement
on the 1650.
Apex is a bit easier to work out, the results are the same as what they had for PUBG, so
around 46 or 47 FPS most likely with 60 FPS from the 1650, fairly close to my own results,
and again around a 30% improvement, once more close to the 31.8% improvement I was seeing.
It looks like Nvidia are at least being honest here and not providing super skewed results
for the most part, though Rainbow Six was a bit iffy, now let’s start talking about
price and value.
I suggest checking updated prices using the links in the description, as prices will change
over time. The 1650 just launched at $149 USD and can currently be bought for that price
on the low end. While the 1050 Ti, which came out around two and a half years ago in October
2016, had an MSRP of $139, however today it’s going for closer to the $180 USD mark on the
lower side. At first glance you’d think Nvidia has put out a card that’s cheaper
than what the 1050 Ti is currently available for while also performing better, everyone’s
a winner, right? If we lived in an Nvidia only world, maybe, however that’s simply
not the case.
The fact is AMD are offering the RX 570 for less than the GTX 1650, around $130 USD new,
and the 570 performs better as well, it’s much better value. This is before we even
consider that it’s been out for 2 years already, so you can probably pick one up cheaper
on the second hand market. While I’m not explicitly comparing to the 570 in this video,
it would have been a crime not to mention this, and don’t worry I will also be comparing
the 570 against the 1650 in an upcoming video, I just wanted to show the difference between
the 1050 Ti and the 1650 here as I saw a lot of people who were curious in the differences.
In isolation the 1650 does look like a fair improvement over the 1050 Ti, which is exactly
how Nvidia seem to be marketing it, but once you take into account options from AMD it’s
not great at all.
If you were buying today let me know which card you’d pick down in the comments and
why, the newer GTX 1650 or older GTX 1050 Ti, and if either of these why not the RX
570? I’d be interested in hearing what you’re picking and why, and if you’re new to the
channel get subscribed for future comparisons and tech videos like this one.