NVIDIA takes the GeForce GTX 1650 for another spin, again

NVIDIA is not done with the GeForce GTX 1650 series. NVIDIA originally released the GeForce GTX 1650 with a TU117 GPU and 4 GB of GDRR5 VRAM. The company then brought out the GTX 1650 SUPER, a TU116 and GDDR6-based bridge between the GTX 1650 and GTX 1660. To confuse matters, NVIDIA subsequently released a GDDR6 version of the GTX 1650. According to PCGamer, NVIDIA gave the GTX 1650 a GDDR6 refresh because of an industry-wide GDDR5 shortage.

Now, AIDA64 has confirmed that NVIDIA will be releasing even more versions of the GTX 1650. Spotted by @momomo_US, the changelog for version 6.25.5434 beta of the utility adds support for "nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (TU106)" and "nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (TU116)". We do not know what specifications these models would carry, but presumably both would feature GDDR6 VRAM. We would not be surprised if these new variants have 75 W TDPs, too. According to @_rogame, the TU106 and TU116 variants carry the identifiers 0x1F0A and 0x2188, respectively.

The decision to build a TU116 GTX 1650 would be strange enough considering the availability of the GTX 1650 SUPER. However, a TU106 GTX 1650 would appear to make even less sense. There will be a reasonable explanation for releasing another set of GTX 1650 cards, even this long into the card's life cycle. NVIDIA could just be using cut-down dies to rid itself of excess stock, as it has with the RTX 2060 KO. We would expect NVIDIA to completely disable the RT cores of the TU106, too.   

Nonetheless, this means that there will be four distinct versions of the GTX 1650 based on three GPUs. The RTX 2060 KO showed that cut-down TU104 dies can still outperform full TU106 ones, so these TU116 and TU106 GTX 1650 cards may well outperform their TU117 siblings, too.