Nvidia Increases GTX 1650 Supply, Ressurects GT 1030
Nvidia's older cards from the Pascal and Turing generations are set to reappear in stores. We're talking about the weakest GeForce GTX 1650 and GT 1030 models, and the sales restart of these cards may be related to the shortage of newer models.
The GPU shortage continues to plague the gaming community. RTX 3000 chips can hardly be found in stores and there is little evidence that this state of affairs will change anytime soon. But does one really need to take only Nvidia's latest generation, Ampere, into account? As we can see from the data collected by Steam, a lot of gamers still play on devices from the Pascal and Turing families. Therefore, Nvidia resumes sales of older graphics cards - GeForce GTX 1650 and GT 1030.
It is the latter GPU powerhouse - the GT 1030 - that has been spotted again in Japanese CFD chain stores and at some Amazon partners after an absence of some time. It's a Gigabyte model that offers 2GB of ultra-fast DDR4 memory and a modern, low-profile cooling system. It can be quite a treat for overclockers, as it allows for advanced overclocking by raising the GPU clock from 1379 MHz to 1417 MHz (boost). To get the most out of the GT 1030, a powerful power supply of 300 Watts is a must. At the same time the price of the GT 1030 seems to be a bargain - only $200. Ok, ok, calm down people, put down your wallets and credit cards, slowly, and read on.
Sorry for that joke earlier... And now more seriously. As reported by user Canbe from the ChipHell forum, this month (or in May) should see an increased presence of the GTX 1650 card in stores. The weakest model from the Turing generation has been a fairly common sight in cheaper laptops and desktops. It has 896 CUDA cores, 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and a memory bandwidth of 128 GB/s. While we can't expect much performance from this chip and it won't enable us to play the latest titles at high detail, it should be able to handle older titles (such as Forza Horizon 4 and Far Cry 5) without problems. Cyberpunk 2077 is quite a challenge for this card though.
There have also been rumors of the return of the GTX 1080 Ti, which already seems like a more sensible gaming proposition. While there is a shortage of current-generation hardware on the market, being able to buy any card can be a good option in certain situations, such as hardware failure. You might even consider buying a low-end card to play low-demand games if the price would justify it. However, as the recent practice of sellers shows, GTX 1650 will probably be much more expensive than during its launch two years ago.
