Question GTX 1650 non-Super "Refurb" cards?

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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Newegg's got a Gigabyte (no pic, but it has the model number and you can go to Gigabyte's site and look it up, with pics). 3x HDMI 2.0, 1x DP, 6-pin PCI-E power, and an MSI Gaming X, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x DP, and 6-pin PCI-E power.

Anyways, both are "Refurbished", for $129.99.

I was wondering if that was "worth it". I understand the the vanilla GTX 1650 is actually slower than an RX 570 4GB card, but it might have newer codecs, like hardware support for VP9 Encode/Decode (maybe? I know decode for Polaris was "Hybrid").

I have the Gigabyte on it's way to me, wondering if it's worth also getting the MSI (Hey, "Gamiing X" looks good in an ad for a build, I think).

Secondarily, do you think that these are actual customer-return refurbs, or just "B stock", or new-old-stock, being sold as "Refurb", because effectively the GTX 1650 has been replaced by the GDDR6-sporting GTX 1650 Super, for mearly $10 more or maybe nothing additional, and that these would be a safe bet to purchase?
 

EliteRetard

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Newegg's got a Gigabyte (no pic, but it has the model number and you can go to Gigabyte's site and look it up, with pics). 3x HDMI 2.0, 1x DP, 6-pin PCI-E power, and an MSI Gaming X, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x DP, and 6-pin PCI-E power.

Anyways, both are "Refurbished", for $129.99.

I was wondering if that was "worth it". I understand the the vanilla GTX 1650 is actually slower than an RX 570 4GB card, but it might have newer codecs, like hardware support for VP9 Encode/Decode (maybe? I know decode for Polaris was "Hybrid").

I have the Gigabyte on it's way to me, wondering if it's worth also getting the MSI (Hey, "Gamiing X" looks good in an ad for a build, I think).

Secondarily, do you think that these are actual customer-return refurbs, or just "B stock", or new-old-stock, being sold as "Refurb", because effectively the GTX 1650 has been replaced by the GDDR6-sporting GTX 1650 Super, for mearly $10 more or maybe nothing additional, and that these would be a safe bet to purchase?

Perhaps this will help?
 

VirtualLarry

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Well, I knew that the lowest-end Turing GTX 1650 cards actually have Pascal'sVolta's NVENC in them, but Turing's NVDEC, I believe from reading prior threads. (Guess I should check that chart to make sure.)

It would be a detriment to game-streamers, but generally, the GTX 1650 is a bit too weak of a card for gaming those AAA games and streaming them anyways, so not a major loss. As long as they can decode internet video (4K VP9 8-bit/10-bit sufficiently), then they should be alright.

I was more wondering about entry-level PC gaming boxes, if the GTX 1650 would be worth throwing in, over the RX 570 / 580 8GB cards, which are around the same price. Granted, these two in the OP take a 6-pin PCI-E, they're not totally free of PCI-E supplemental power connectors.
 
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Arkaign

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That's closer to the price they should have launched at. It's a good product at a bad price. I like the fact that they're small, quiet, cool running cards that perform well at 1080p mix of high and medium settings, with excellent drivers. But the MSRP was too high.

570/580 are faster, but also bigger, hotter, hungrier beasts. I got an XFX 580 8GB something or other on here for a friend, and we immediately had hell with the thing. It set itself and a new Corsair 550w on fire within a week, which XFX covered the 580 replacement of, but the replacement was once again a hot, noisy bastard. Which makes sense, the 580 is essentially an overclocked 480, and I wouldn't dare touch a 590 lol. Undervolting it helped noticably, but I feel like if I'm handing something off to someone, it shouldn't need tweaking to run acceptably. We ended up ditching the 580 for an alternative, and he's been much happier since getting rid of the Polaris.

Basically if you have the airflow and PSU already set for it, and are willing to tweak a little, they are better options. However if you are running a small mATX basic case and want to just use a nice basic 400w PSU for a quiet, small multifunction PC, the 1650 at $129 is not a bad option. If you combo it with a lower model Ryzen or 115x system, you'll have something well matched and extremely quiet and budget friendly.
 
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VirtualLarry

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That's closer to the price they should have launched at. It's a good product at a bad price. I like the fact that they're small, quiet, cool running cards that perform well at 1080p mix of high and medium settings, with excellent drivers. But the MSRP was too high.
I think that NVidia could have "cleaned up" had they priced the GTX 1650 @ $120. (Which for a long time, was the price-point of the GTX 1050 2GB model, IIRC. At least, "street price".)
570/580 are faster, but also bigger, hotter, hungrier beasts. I got an XFX 580 8GB something or other on here for a friend, and we immediately had hell with the thing. It set itself and a new Corsair 550w on fire within a week
Sorry, I had to ROTFL at your expense there... I'm sorry to hear that. My Polaris cards sure got toasty as well. No fires, though, thankfully. Though I worry a little about my dual-Polaris rig, the way I have it wired.

, which XFX covered the 580 replacement of, but the replacement was once again a hot, noisy bastard. Which makes sense, the 580 is essentially an overclocked 480, and I wouldn't dare touch a 590 lol. Undervolting it helped noticably, but I feel like if I'm handing something off to someone, it shouldn't need tweaking to run acceptably. We ended up ditching the 580 for an alternative, and he's been much happier since getting rid of the Polaris.
Yeah, Polaris was nice for a time, and the RX 470 was actually almost preferable to the RX 570, because the 570 was a bit factory OCed, hot, etc. But Turing beats it nowadays hands-down in performance/watt. And even moving to 7nm for Navi, hasn't seemed to have given it new wings in performance/watt, probably because AMD is still overvolting their cards, for "reasons".

Basically if you have the airflow and PSU already set for it, and are willing to tweak a little, they are better options. However if you are running a small mATX basic case and want to just use a nice basic 400w PSU for a quiet, small multifunction PC, the 1650 at $129 is not a bad option. If you combo it with a lower model Ryzen or 115x system, you'll have something well matched and extremely quiet and budget friendly.

That was kind of my target idea. I have a Ryzen R5 1600 that I took the RX 570 8GB out of, and sold to someone on here for the cost of shipping, and was planning on replacing it with some sort of "appropriate" GPU, and then I've got another box here with a G3258 @ 4.2Ghz (though, with only 2x2GB of DDR3, should bump that to 2x8GB if I'm serious about turning it into a gaming PC), on an ITX board that allows for OC, that I thought that the GTX 1650 might make an OK match with, and I've got another 1150 box with an i5-4670K in it @ 4.0Ghz in storage, with no GPU, that would also be a candidate (I think) for one of these GTX 1650 cards.

I wouldn't even consider a GTX 1650 @ $149-159, or whatever MSRP is, but @ $129? Hmm, makes you think a little. Maybe not as powerful as Polaris (RX 570, which also comes in 8GB varieties), but not nearly as hot+loud, either. And some GTX 1650 cards (gimped though that they are) can fit into slot power requirements, without additional power. (The two that I mentioned, both take a single 6-pin PCI-E, which some OEM systems have, or it's not nearly as hard to convert a single unused molex (or a pair, better) to a 6-pin PCI-E power connection.)

Edit: Granted, these are "Refurbs". And if they're post-customer refurbs, there may be issues, especially if they were overclocked. I picked up a couple of GT 1030 Gigabyte cards (ITX gaming style, single-fan), and they indeed had some minor issues with the display.

Edit: As an Aside, is the GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5 card, any faster than a GTX 1050 ti 4GB card? Because someone (perhaps you), showed some videos of a G3258 OC'ed, running a GTX 1050 ti 4GB card, playing Fortnight, and it played alright.
 
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Arkaign

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The gap seems to be :


RX550 2GB : 80%***

Base 1050ti : 100%

1060 3GB : 110%

1650 4GB / 1060 6GB* : 120%

570 / 480 : ~135%***

580 : ~145%***


I *starred* the Polaris, +, and Polaris12 results because they really are uneven. In a few random titles, they will be even faster than this average, but at the same time in some titles they are way off the mark. One example is modern RSS or Fortnite, the 480/570 is actually slower than the 1650 there. And in BFV they're about dead even. In most games the gap is more like 10-20% in favor of 480/570.


It's just that the edge cases make it worth looking at individual titles if you or the customer is one of those diehard fans that plays one title very heavily and not much else (perfect example my buddy Joel and BF series, from 3 all through V now lol), then definitely look up how each option handles that particular game. If it's just to be a wide open 'play a bit of everything' box, then those averages above are a good rule of thumb.


The other thing to consider, and why I placed the 1060 6GB where it is, is AIB quality and range. Some models are mostly in a very tight group performance wise, with no extremely large reason to favor one brand/model vs another. Other GPU models seem wildly variant. 1060 6GB and up in Pascal are definitely one of the latter. Depending on 10/11Gbps memory, power delivery range, stock clocks vs boost potential and of course binning and cooling options, you could see HUGE variance between the options, that could even be a different class from what you might expect.

What do I mean exactly by that? Well, my favorite example is probably because Pascal lasted so dang long that it sort of evolved. The initial GTX 1080 Founders Edition was this :

1607 Base, 1733 Boost, 10Gbps Ram, with a cruddy blower cooler held over from olden days design. 1

I ran a 970 for a long time for my personal box, before getting a steal on a 1060 6GB EVGA OC variant, which was a minor upgrade (mainly in VRAM starved stuff like modded Skyrim/Witcher 3). Then, opportunity struck and I was able to buy a GTX 1080 vs Asus, the Strix model after the 11Gbps revision of the lineup. This was about halfway through the Pascal's extremely long duty before RTX. And this model had :

1700/1835 clocks, with 11Gbps Micron and a WAY better HSF that meant it could basically sit at max clocks all day, and OC even further if you wanted. Already about 15% faster than 1080FE in most situations, it could go easily beyond 2Ghz and open the gap far wider due to the overall build quality and power delivery.

Where this gets relevant is how cards are measured when new models are released. It's obviously beneficial to present the new models in their best possible light, and since the Nvidia FE Maxwell and Pascal cards were the early models with the worst performance, they invariably choose those as examples despite them being rare in actual overall sales. It was more common in the 780/780ti days, but in 900/1000 timeframe, I *very* rarely see FEs in the wild. People widely bought superior AIBs with better performance after they became available shortly after launch. The FE was Nvidia being cheeky and taxing launch day diehards. So when RTX was compared to FE Pascal, it looked better than it was. But in actual fact, a good AIB 1080 was as good as a 2070, and a good AIB 1080ti like the Aorus etc was as good as a 2080 (better arguably with 11GB vs 8GB if RT didn't interest you).

Nvidia changed this up with RTX FEs. Perhaps knowing that they needed to justify the immense prices a bit more, these FEs actually were quite nice compared to AIB levels, often being as good or better, and only the best AIBs exceeding FE specs, mainly due to power delivery and sustained clocks. Eg; the 2060FE is better than the 2060KO and other cheapo 2060 models.

So that adds an extra wrinkle to A/B comparing your options. Say you have an option to get a XYZ OC model Nvidia vs an ABC OC model AMD, then you have the added research to find the gap vs typical models. Some vary little, some vary massively. Whee :) Hence this incredibly long response.

And across all of this, the thing still has to meet your desired size, PCIe power connection/consumption levels, and heat/noise concerns, all of which may mean being able to deal with a big hungry bastard or needing something that leans closer to small, quiet, and either single 6-pin or only slot powered.

YMMV widely of course, but more research is always valuable, and when it comes to the true budget extremes, it gets pretty interesting. Like, what is the best $25 or $50 used GPU you can find for gaming? You might be surprised! And this of course means seeing how some old used models play with modern OS and games, which makes research even trickier.
 

VirtualLarry

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Thanks for the long and detailed response.

I was going to ask that question next: Used GPUs, what's reasonbly-priced? Seems like most sites like Newegg, you won't find any actual decent GPUs for less than $100, and those ones that are, are like China-seller GTX 750 ti 2GB GDDR5 cards (if they aren't fake).
 

VirtualLarry

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Another question, given a (theoretically) unlimited supply of these cards for $129.99 ("Refurb" or otherwise), what rigs would you pair them up with?

1) Ryzen R5 1600 w/32GB RAM
2) Haswell G3258 @ 4.2Ghz w/4GB RAM
3) Haswell i5-4670K @ 4.0Ghz w/16GB RAM
4) Profit???
 

Arkaign

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I feel like the second pair could be the best balance. The R5 would currently be slower than a 4670k @ 4Ghz in most games, yet could be upgraded to a 3600 or whatever in the future, making it possibly more of a candidate for something a tier higher, perhaps a Vega 56 or 1070+ Pascal deal that pops up.
 

VirtualLarry

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I feel like the second pair could be the best balance. The R5 would currently be slower than a 4670k @ 4Ghz in most games, yet could be upgraded to a 3600 or whatever in the future, making it possibly more of a candidate for something a tier higher, perhaps a Vega 56 or 1070+ Pascal deal that pops up.
Thanks, that's true, a GTX 1070 ($200 on ebay, maybe less now) would make a fine choice for an R5 1600 rig.

How does the amount of system RAM fit into the amount of VRAM on a card, though? Could you even use a 4GB VRAM video card, in a PC with only 4GB of system RAM? (*Yes, I know that they are memory-mapped into x64 physical memory space in different regions, so technically yes, but I was more commenting on whether or not Windows 10 allocates system RAM as a virtual VRAM backing-store, to unload VRAM into, should something need to use it imminently.)'

I guess that I would feel more comfortable popping in 2x4GB or 2x8GB DDR3-1333/1600 into the Haswell G3258 rig, in order to play games like Fortnight.

Btw, I found some videos of G4560 rigs playing games with GTX 1650, not a bad combo (not great either, but def. playable), but was unable to come up with any on YT specifically for G3258 and GTX 1650 together. (I suppose that possibly I could use G3258 and GTX 1050 / ti as a proxy for that, but like some videos, maybe HardwareUnboxed, found that the G3258, or was it the G4560, if you gave it "too much GPU", that it would make you CPU-bottlenecked, and then background tasks in Windows wouldn't run, and you would get stuttering when they were finally forced to run via the Windows Scheduler.)
 

Arkaign

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I think it would depend on how IO limited you are. When on 4GB, the pagefile gets thrashed pretty solid under modern OS, games, and even drivers lol. However I did grab a $99 eBay closeout of an i3-8100 Slimline HP PC with a 1TB spinner and an Optane module in the m.2 slot. And damned if it isn't strangely fast. I put a low profile 1050ti in it to play with, and for the most part games like Fortnite, Minecraft, etc ran quite nicely. I then nabbed an i5 9400 and 16GB out of a 'dead" PC I bought for scrap, and of course now it's completely excellent in all regards. I even had a 256GB SSD I was going to install, but the Optane thing honestly makes that unnecessary for this kind of rig. Hoping to sell it for about $250 without the 1050, in which case it would make an outstanding small quiet office PC or HDMI 2.0b/HDCP 2.2 home theater 4k rig.
 

VirtualLarry

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This is a neat one. I plugged the GTX 1650 into the R5 1600 rig, and connected it with a (passive) DP-to-HDMI (1080P?) cable, that never did 4K before on my other rigs, but when Win10 loaded the NVidia drivers, BOOM, there it was, the desktop in 4K UHD glory. I didn't check if it was 60Hz or not, guess I should.
 

alexruiz

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... I got an XFX 580 8GB something or other on here for a friend, and we immediately had hell with the thing. It set itself and a new Corsair 550w on fire within a week...

That one, I do NOT believe.

A modern Corsair 550W PSU has 45A in the 12V rail. Those 45A are almost enough for 2 RX 580s in crossfire.
Even the lowest Corsair (VS series, 80+ white) still has 43A in the 12V rail. That is power to spare for a RX 580.
You guys did something else to kill the PSU.
Unless you paired it with a i9-9900k furnace, no cpu/gpu combo should come close to 550W if paired with a RX 580.

Just for curiosity, what Corsair model was it?
 

Arkaign

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That one, I do NOT believe.

A modern Corsair 550W PSU has 45A in the 12V rail. Those 45A are almost enough for 2 RX 580s in crossfire.
Even the lowest Corsair (VS series, 80+ white) still has 43A in the 12V rail. That is power to spare for a RX 580.
You guys did something else to kill the PSU.
Unless you paired it with a i9-9900k furnace, no cpu/gpu combo should come close to 550W if paired with a RX 580.

Just for curiosity, what Corsair model was it?

It was whatever Micro Center had on hand at the Dallas store that he picked up with some other odds and ends. It certainly wasn't over spec, just an unlucky combo of a used GPU that went up in flames (literally, the back of the card lit up and smoked), and it took the PSU along with it.

If I msg Joel tomorrow, I bet he still has pics of the fried card.