Before we get to the GTX 1650 benchmarks, I have something to get off my chest. One of my New Year's resolutions was to talk less about the GPU crisis and more about the optimism that is now in full swing, and for the most part I've done a good job of that. However, it is hard to talk about the GTX 1650 and how much of a great value card it is without addressing WHY you should be buying it in Q1 of 2022.
The GTX cards from Nvidia are still worthy of a look if you are eager to get into PC gaming, migrating from console or if you have finally had a payday that meant you can - at last - buy your gaming PC. January was a tough month for us all, but the light at the end of the tunnel is the huge savings on GTX gaming PCs, which will make way for retailers' new stock of Nvidia's recent release, the RTX 3050, and Intel's GPUs which are now just around the corner.
Budget Gaming PC Build
The spec of the benchmark PC we used is a typical budget build with mid-range capabilities. At under £700 you get an Intel Core i3 10100F 3.6GHz, which has decent single core performance and can boost up to 4.30 GHz when required. Whilst this PC is predominantly aimed at E-Sports and competitive gaming, there's plenty of room with the GTX 1650 and 8GB DDR4 RAM to play games such as GTA 5, Halo Infinite and God of War. yes, even God of War gets a look in with these specs, thanks to the optimisations made by developers in the "Original" preset. Further tweaking can produce even better results, of course.
Horizon 3 Intel GTX 1650 Gaming PC
Operating System: Windows 10 Home CPU: Intel Core i3 10100F 3.6GHz RAM: 8GB DDR4 2666MHz Dedicated Graphics: GeForce GTX 1650 4GB Storage: 500GB Kingston NV1 NVMe SSD Wi-Fi: 867Mbps Built-in Wi-Fi
Horizon 3 Intel GTX 1650 Gaming PC
GTX 1650 Benchmarks
When we got down to brass tacks, the GTX 1650 performed exceedingly well with our test games:
- Halo Infinite - Medium 1080p
- Halo Infinite - Medium 1440p
- God of War - Original 1080p
- GTA 5 - High 1080p
- GTA 5 - Very High 1080p
- CS:GO - Default 1440p
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - High 1080p
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Ultra 1080p
GTX 1650 Benchmarks:
Halo Infinite
Being available on Game Pass, Halo Infinite is one of the most popular games right now, and well worth a benchmark on a GTX card. It does not surprise us that we get lots of customers calling our team requesting a PC spec that will play the game in 1080p, either.
The benchmarks produced predictable results in 1080p, using the Medium setting we were in the mid to high 40's, with 45 - 49FPS. When we switched to 1440p, we lost around 10 frames per second, with performance hovering around 34 - 36 FPS in Bot Bootcamp multiplayer.
Halo Infinite - GTX 1650 Benchmark
As with all of our benchmarks, we simply use the presets for a neutral result. You can - and should - optimise for your graphics card and setup, however. This way you can get a steady 60 FPS or higher, depending on your connection speed and your monitor.
Best Optimisation Settings For Halo Infinite (GTX 1650)
Display Settings
- Field of View: 90-100
- Display Adapter: Your graphics card
- Display Monitor: Your gaming monitor
- Borderless Fullscreen: On
- Window Size: (Disabled with Borderless Fullsceen enabled)
- Resolution Scale: 100%
- Minimum Frame Rate: Disabled
- Maximum Frame Rate: Your monitors refresh rate (e.g 144)
- VSync: Off
- Limit Inactive Frame Limit: Off
Graphics Settings
- Quality Preset: Custom
- Anti-Aliasing: Low
- Texture Filtering: Low
- Ambient Occlusion: Low
- Texture Quality: Medium
- Geometry Quality: Low/Medium
- Reflections: Off
- Depth of Field: Low
- Shadow Quality: Medium
- Lighting Quality: Low
- Volumetric Fog Quality: Low
- Cloud Quality: Low
- Dynamic Wind: Off
- Ground Cover Quality: Low
- Effects Quality: Low
- Decal Quality: Low/Medium
- Animation Quality: Auto
- Terrain Quality: Medium
- Simulation Quality: Low
- Flocking Quality: Off
- ASync Compute: Off
- Shader Quality: Low
Sensory Settings
- Blur: 0%
- Screen Shake: 0%
- Exposure: 30% - 50%
- Full Screen Effects: 0%
- Speed Lines: Off
- Sharpening: 50% - 60%
Source: Reddit
God of War
Not surpisingly, God of War did very well with the GTX 1650, although the results were not so fantastic in other presets. We used the Original preset, and achieved a similar framerate to Halo Infinite in 1080p, with ~45 FPS average.
God of War - GTX 1650 Benchmark
Best Optimisation Settings For God of War (GTX 1650)
Graphics Display Settings
- Display Mode: Borderless
- Aspect Ratio: Auto
- Vsync: Off (May require Vsync on depending on monitor)
- FPS Limit: Play the game with FPS Limit OFF until you see a good average, then set it to that limit.
- Motion Blur: 0
- Film Grain: 3
- FidelityFX Super Resolution: OFF
- Render Scale: 100%
- Texture Quality: Original
- Model Quality: Original
- Anisotropic Filter: Original
- Shadows: Low
- Reflections: Disable
- Atmospherics: High
- Ambient Occlusion: High
GTA 5
The real winner when it comes to older cards, GTA 5 is a firm hit with those looking at mid-range and budget systems. The GTX 1650 is capable of delivering a smooth and visually appealing gaming session in Los Santos, with over 60 FPS throughout our benchmark in the High preset window. At Very High preset, we see a framerate drop of around 8 - 10 frames per second, and a very capable 55 FPS was the result. These settings also had crowd and traffic density cranked up to max, and no optimisation on any settings.
Grand Theft Auto 5 - GTX 1650 Benchmark
Best Optimisation Settings For God of War (GTX 1650)
Tweaking GTA 5 graphics settings could be an article on its own, but these settings should produce good results for the GTX 1650:
Tips:
The best advice for GTA 5 is to turn off AA (antialiasing) and AF (anisotropic filtering), and use MSAA instead of FXAA. MSAA at 2x or 4x will improve FPS. Lower the population density and variety, and lower the texture and grass quality. The textures of grass & vegetation are very peripheral when it comes to GTA 5, because you're usually flying by it at such as speed, it is not noticeable.
CS:GO
CS:GO is the type of game the GTX 1650 was made for, and there's no surprise seeing over 100 FPS with this competitive game. At 1440p, the game played smooth as butter.
CS:GO - GTX 1650 Benchmark
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher 3 features in most of our gaming benchmarks on YouTube, and for good reason. With beautiful attention to detail, lighting and textures in general, The Witcher 3 is an awesome standard for an old game. We saw 40 - 45 FPS in 1080p High, and around 35 - 37 FPS in Ultra 1080p.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - GTX 1650 Benchmark
GTX 1650 Benchmark - Last Word
The Horizon 3 Intel GTX 1650 Gaming PC stands up alongside newer cards like the RX 6500 XT, but cannot hold a candle to the RTX 3050, capable of delivering 60 FPS+ in Ultra mode on God of War... this system is, however, currently around £130 more expensive.
If you really want to save that £130, then the GTX 1650 is for you, and will offer the type of performance you can see above. With excellent performance across the E-Sports and first person competitive games like Rainbow Six Siege, CS:GO, and Valorant, there's plenty to offer from this old but gold card.
