Nvidia is releasing a new graphics card. Is it the Nvidia Ampere, a new GPU in the RTX 3000 series? No. It is not. Then is it another Ti or Super card in the existing GeForce series? It is another GTX 1650. But this time it's a GTX 1650 Ultra. Yes, another Turing suffix.

This is the fourth spin on the 1650, and since it has almost identical specs to the original GTX 1650 except for a 90W TDP and higher GDDR6, I'll forgive you for not being entirely overwhelmed by this news. However, it is honestly interesting, and partly due to its higher TDP.

What this 90W TDP highlights is the different GPUs that Nvidia is packing into the GTX 1650 Ultra card. Instead of the standard TU116 silicon, the Ultra has a nominally higher-spec TU106 chip. Slight number changes aside, this is the GPU that the green team originally included in the RTX 2070, and later in the RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Super, as Nvidia struggles to remove the last vestiges of high-end Turing silicon before a new generation of GPUs is released This shows that Nvidia is desperate to get rid of the last vestiges of high-end Turing silicon before a new generation of GPUs is released.

And this indicates that mainstream Turing cards could be the only cheap game in GeForce town for some time yet.

As Videocardz points out, this is not an uncommon practice and generally signals the end of a generation of graphics cards; with shiny things like the RTX 3080 looming large on the horizon, high-end chips are not so necessary. The upcoming Ampere card has everyone's attention, and it's getting harder and harder to throw $400 at a current-generation GPU that is likely to be quickly supplanted. [So Nvidia is trying to cut bits of ray tracing and CUDA cores out of the TU106 silicon to make it fit the standard GTX 1650 specs and ship it to partners to make a card that will still be bought. So even if Nvidia's Ampere is expected to be in GeForce trim this year, it will only be on high-end cards, with mainstream GPUs to follow in 2021.

The suffix "Ultra" does not appear to be something Nvidia itself deploys for cards with TU106, nor does it appear to be something only Galax uses to indicate a GPU change; Palit's listing on the EEC database includes the NE61650U model, which may be another line of GTX 1650 Ultra cards.

You probably won't find the "Ultra" SKUs that Nvidia details in their marketing, and we expect little real difference in baseline gaming performance. However, the higher TDP may mean that there may be a bit more headroom in the chip for overclocking if you really want to push the clock.

At this low level, however, we are big fans of the GTX 1650 Super and recommend it if you are looking for 1080p gaming performance on a budget.