NVIDIA GTX 1650 Lacks Turing NVENC Encoder, Packs Volta's Multimedia Engine

[btarunr]

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 has a significantly watered down multimedia feature-set compared to the other GeForce GTX 16-series GPUs. The card was launched this Tuesday (23 April) without any meaningful technical documentation for reviewers, which caused many, including us, to assume that NVIDIA carried over the "Turing" NVENC encoder, giving you a feature-rich HTPC or streaming card at $150. Apparently that is not the case. According to full specifications put out by NVIDIA on its website product-page that went up hours after product launch, the GTX 1650 (and the TU117 silicon) features a multimedia engine that's been carried over from the older "Volta" architecture.

Turing's NVENC is known to have around 15 percent performance uplift over Volta's, which means the GTX 1650 will have worse game livestreaming performance than expected. The GTX 1650 has sufficient muscle for playing e-Sports titles such as PUBG at 1080p, and with an up-to-date accelerated encoder, would have pulled droves of more amateur streamers to the mainstream on Twitch and YouTube Gaming. Alas, the $220 GTX 1660 would be your ticket to that.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[stimpy88]

The usual nGreedia tricks...

Why would they even go to the expense of doing this??? It can only be to trick customers, or create artificial barriers.

Nasty, petty minded company, with an open contempt for its own customers.

 

[Flaky]

Buy higher model, pay the streamer tax.

 

[R0H1T]

Ngreedia's back wait they never left town

 

[Ebo]

Its easy to have champagne taste but only beer money.......I think its totally fair.

 

[Chomiq]

Its easy to have champagne taste but only beer money.......I think its totally fair.

Except in this case the yellow liquid they're serving you is neither champagne nor beer.

 

[ZhangirDuyseke]

The usual nGreedia tricks...

Why would they even go to the expense of doing this??? It can only be to trick customers, or create artificial barriers.

Nasty, petty minded company, with an open contempt for its own customers.

How does TechPowerUp just ignore this comments?! WTF, if you are a streamer than it makes sense to buy good graphics card, you fool! That's a low end card, why would Nvidia put it here, and don't call Nvidia bad names!

 

[spnidel]

How does TechPowerUp just ignore this comments?! WTF, if you are a streamer than it makes sense to buy good graphics card, you fool! That's a low end card, why would Nvidia put it here, and don't call Nvidia bad names!

yeah how dare you call nvidia names bro, admins please ban this heretic for badmouthing nvidia!!!

 

[Deleted member 172152]

yeah how dare you call nvidia names bro, admins please ban this heretic for badmouthing nvidia!!!

Yeah, my feelings are so hurt as I had a gtx760, which was great and now it's sad!

 

[notb]

So first of all:
NO, 1650 still has the NVENC encoder. The only missing feature is the HEVC B-frame support (introduced in Turing).
Basically, it's the same encoder we had in Pascal.

How solid must 1650 be if the usual anti-Nvidia nitpicking results in an article about missing hardware encoder? And the one that's not true?

 

[R0H1T]

Yes, so solid that even the youtube reviews are giving it a meh/miss at that price

Also what about the up to 15% better efficiency via Turing NVENC?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1120854950358073344

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah, my feelings are so hurt as I had a gtx760, which was great and now it's sad!

If your GPU is leaking, go see a doctor!

 

[OSdevr]

How solid must 1650 be if the usual anti-Nvidia nitpicking results in an article about missing hardware encoder? And the one that's not true?

I feel like TPU is slowly becoming WCCFtech.

 

[cellar door]

Again! - lets address the source of this article. REDDIT post.

It really still should be labeled as - RUMOR

 

[TheLostSwede]

I feel like TPU is slowly becoming WCCFtech.

In terms of content or comments?

 

[Hardware Geek]

Don't worry. I'm sure they did this so they can put it on the ti version and call it revolutionary...

I'm not a fan of either AMD or Nvidia but I do think Nvidia intentionally buried this information so people would assume it had the new encoder fully enabled. Shady as hell, but to be fair, they all do this kind of thing.

Not much different than AMD calling the new apus 3000 series when it is based on the Zen+ architecture and not Zen 2 like the 3000 series processors.

 

[notb]

Yes, so solid that even the youtube reviews are giving it a meh/miss at that price

If experienced staff/forum members on TPU can't understand the demand for this kind of low-power products (which pushes the price up), I wouldn't expect that from vloggers.

Also what about the up to 15% better efficiency via Turing NVENC?

It simply means the resulting file will be "up to 15%" smaller. At least in some lab-test they've performed.
Obviously, it could be way more than 15% in some specific cases.

I wonder how many people commenting in this thread know what B frames are (or at least heard about them earlier).
The article's author likely doesn't...

 

[IceShroom]

Yes, so solid that even the youtube reviews are giving it a meh/miss at that price

Also what about the up to 15% better efficiency via Turing NVENC?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1120854950358073344

Especially when Nvidia users care about efficiency.

 

[Keullo-e]

That's a low end card, why would Nvidia put it here, and don't call Nvidia bad names!

Nope, that's a lower tier mid-end card. GT 1030 is a low-end card, and if a GT 1630 would be released, it would be a low-end card.

 

[newtekie1]

This is one of those non-issues for the use case of the card.

The Volta encoder was a marginal step up from Pascal, and the Turing encoder was a step up from Volta. This helps if you're encoding 4K+ content, especially when streaming and need to encode 4K+ content in real time.

But how many streamers do you think will be buying a GTX1650 and playing games in 4K? I bet none.

 

[Keullo-e]

I use software encoding myself, in fact I've not tried the AMD encoder yet, first Radeon card in use since I started streaming in 2017.

 

[jabbadap]

Again! - lets address the source of this article. REDDIT post.

It really still should be labeled as - RUMOR

Uhm what is the "Rumor" part on it? Nvidia says it themselves:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix

Though that 15% better should have some real world numbers shown. But yeah for HTPC usage nvenc is just pointless anyway, it has that very good HW decoder from other Turings and that is all that matters.

Edit: Ahh that was 15% more efficient not more performance, quite different things.

Nope, that's a lower tier mid-end card. GT 1030 is a low-end card, and if a GT 1630 would be released, it would be a low-end card.

gt1030 is entry level gaming/multimedia card. xx50 series has usually been low end gaming.

 

[notb]

I use software encoding myself, in fact I've not tried the AMD encoder yet, first Radeon card in use since I started streaming in 2017.

Prepare to be disappointed. AMD's encoder is behind Nvidia and Intel on both quality and latency. No one really knows why.

If you ever decide that encoding is too hard on your CPU, just get an Intel NUC / 3rd part Barebone with Quick Sync support (or maybe you already have an Intel laptop lying around).
It should be at least Kaby/Gemini Lake to support 4K HEVC.

 

[Keullo-e]

Prepare to be disappointed. AMD's encoder is behind Nvidia and Intel on both quality and latency. No one really knows why.

If you ever decide that encoding is too hard on your CPU, just get an Intel NUC / 3rd part Barebone with Quick Sync support (or maybe you already have an Intel laptop lying around).
It should be at least Kaby/Gemini Lake to support 4K HEVC.

Ah, so I won't bother. Well, Ryzen 5 2600 handles the software encoding fine.

In fact I don't even know how streaming with two PCs work, so no, I don't have an another machine for that.

 

[jabbadap]

Ah, so I won't bother. Well, Ryzen 5 2600 handles the software encoding fine.

In fact I don't even know how streaming with two PCs work, so no, I don't have an another machine for that.

It's a bit hit and miss. For AMD you should try AMD Relive, if that ain't give you acceptable quality non other software can(If your audio goes out of sync, enable HPET on bios. It had bug for OC Ryzens an timer did havoc on audio sync, I don't really know if it fixed).

Problem with streaming on gpus is h.264 that every streaming service uses, it can be done with gpu but the quality is crappy on lower bitrate, thus cpu encoding is usually way to go. H.265 would work better, but no service provider want's to pay that license fee for MPEG LA and I don't really blame them.