Skip to main content

Nvidia’s GTX 1630 may be up to 72% slower than the GTX 1650

Nvidia’s upcoming budget graphics card, the GTX 1630, was initially reported to be launching on May 31. Now, it seems that the release date has been pushed up to June 15.

Alongside the rumored release date, new information about the graphics card emerged, and unfortunately, it’s not all too exciting. According to these reports, the GTX 1630 might be up to 72% slower than the GTX 1650 GDDR6 in synthetic 3DMark tests.

Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics card inside a PC.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Today’s round of not-so-happy Nvidia news comes from VideoCardz, which cites its own anonymous source as it shares the alleged embargo timeline for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630. The embargo lifts on June 15, 2022, at 6 a.m. PT — which strongly implies that would be the day for the GPU to hit the shelves. This is a two-week delay compared to previous predictions.

Recommended Videos

Interestingly, the embargo timeline only mentions an “on-shelf” date. It might be that Nvidia decided not to send out samples to publications for reviewing ahead of the launch. Seeing as AMD’s recent Radeon RX 6500 XT received mostly unfavorable reviews, it could be that Nvidia also expects a lukewarm welcome for the rival to AMD’s budget GPU. Based on the specifications, that does seem quite likely.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

According to VideoCardz, the upcoming GTX 1630 features the TU117-150 GPU. The CUDA core count has been cut down to 512, which is considerably less than the GTX 1650 with its 896 cores. It also has a tiny 64-bit memory bus, 4GB GDDR6 memory clocked at 12Gbps, and a less-than-impressive bandwidth of 96GB/s.

Comparing the new Turing GPU to its older siblings puts the new release in a bad light. The 6-year-old Pascal GeForce GTX 1050 Ti has a higher memory bandwidth (112GB/s) than the GPU we’re about to see in two weeks. VideoCardz also notes that based on synthetic 3DMark tests, the dated GTX 1650 GDDR6 should be at least 72% faster than the fresh GTX 1630.

The embargo timeline for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630.
VideoCardz

It’s a curious time for Nvidia to release such a cut-down product. With GPU prices falling and the situation on the market finally on its way to something akin to normalcy, the demand for a low-end product might be limited. On the other hand, perhaps Nvidia doesn’t need the GTX 1630 to be wildly successful. The manufacturer might be releasing the GPU in small quantities, fully knowing that it won’t be a hit on the current market.

Nvidia hasn’t disclosed how much the GPU will cost, so that might still become the selling point for this model. If it’s very cheap, it might find its way into low-end desktop builds. However, if the pricing is not very competitive, many people will likely choose to get a better model and spend a little bit more for a boost in performance.

Until Nvidia itself speaks up on the scope of the launch and the pricing, all we can do is speculate. However, it’s pretty safe to say that the RTX 4000 launch later this year will bring a lot more excitement than the GTX 1630 can ever hope to muster — and rightfully so.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Nvidia says the RTX 5080 is ‘about’ 15% faster than the RTX 4080 without DLSS
Nvidia's RTX 5090 sitting at CES 2025.

Nvidia made some bold claims about its RTX 50-series GPUs when they were announced earlier this month, saying that the new range can outclass their previous-gen counterparts with twice the performance. Although Nvidia's new lineup might be among the best graphics cards when they launch, the vast majority of the extra performance comes on the back of the new DLSS Multi-Frame Generation feature that's exclusive to RTX 50-series GPUs.

During Nvidia's Editor's Day for Blackwell GPUs at CES 2025, GeForce desktop product manager Justin Walker said that the RTX 5080 was about 15% faster than the RTX 4080 without DLSS 4, and that the RTX 5070 would be about 20% faster than the RTX 4070 without the feature. Nvidia didn't provide hard performance numbers for any of the new GPUs it's releasing, so pay careful attention to the "about" at the start of that statement. Walker provided a general impression of the generational uplift you can expect, but it's important to wait for reviews before drawing any conclusions about the new cards.

Read more
Nvidia just announced an app that every PC gamer should install
G-Assist

Last year, Nvidia revealed Project G-Assist. At the time, it was just a technical demo of an AI assistant that could guide you in the right direction in games, but Nvidia is turning it into an actual product. Project G-Assist is coming to the Nvidia app in beta starting in February for all RTX graphics cards, but it looks a bit different from that original tech demo.

Now, Project G-Assist is less of a game-specific helper and more of an AI assistant for Nvidia graphics cards. It's basically a chatbot, not dissimilar from ChatGPT, but it has access to all of the knobs and switches that control your GPU. With it, you can ask G-Assist to optimize your performance in a particular game, and it'll automatically set your GPU parameters and game settings accordingly. Or you can ask it to graph your frame rate and latency, and then ask it to optimize your performance for a specific frame rate target. Those are just a couple of examples, too.

Read more
AMD may still wait for Nvidia before unleashing RDNA 4
Various AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

AMD's future best graphics cards should be right around the corner, but with no specifics, it's hard to say when exactly we'll reach that particular corner. However, a new leak from the Chiphell forum implies that whatever release date AMD may have had in mind for its RX 9000 series GPUs may have changed. The most interesting part is that the leaker implies Nvidia may have played a part in this decision.

Before we dive in, remember that all of this is speculation. During its CES 2025 keynote, AMD barely spoke about RDNA 4, so the release dates are a mystery. Some leakers repeated a rumored release date of January 23 in the past few days, though, and according to Napoleon on the Chiphell forums, that may no longer be true.

Read more