GTX 1650 to RTX 5050: Is the Upgrade Worth It? (2026)

Yes, upgrade. An RTX 5050 is roughly twice the card a GTX 1650 is, and it ends the 4 GB memory problem that has been quietly wrecking your frame times for years. If you are still deciding whether the swap is due at all, start with whether it is time to upgrade your GPU.

Now the uncomfortable part. Do not buy the RTX 5050. It sits at the bottom of the current Nvidia stack, a little behind last generation's cheapest card, and one rung up buys double the memory and a lot more frame rate for a modest stretch. Before you buy anything, check whether your power supply has a spare 8-pin PCIe cable. Plenty of GTX 1650 cards never needed one.

At a glance

Where each upgrade wins

Benchmarks

One table, one reviewer's test suite, so the rows compare like for like. Nobody currently benchmarks a GTX 1650 against an RTX 5050 in the same run, and the cross-card numbers floating around come from different rigs at different presets. Here is where the 5050 lands against the cards a 1650 owner is realistically choosing between, with the 5050 set to 100.

In absolute terms, TechSpot measured the RTX 5050 at roughly 72 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p high, and about 66 fps averaged across an 18-game 1080p suite. That is a real 1080p card. It is also a few percent behind the RTX 4060, the slowest card of the previous generation, which tells you how little headroom you are buying. Demanding Unreal Engine 5 titles still want settings turned down or upscaling switched on. If your budget is firmly at this tier, our budget 1080p GPU picks cover the alternatives at the same spend.

The connector problem nobody mentions

The GTX 1650 draws 75 W, which the PCIe slot supplies on its own. That is why so many 1650 cards ship with no power connector at all, and why they ended up in thousands of small office-tower prebuilts with modest power supplies and no spare cables in the loom.

The RTX 5050 draws 130 W and wants a single 8-pin PCIe connector, with 550 W recommended for the system. The RX 9060 XT draws 160 W and wants the same single 8-pin. So the first thing to do is open the side panel and look for a spare 6+2-pin PCIe cable. If there is not one, the card is not your first purchase. Reports from owners of OEM prebuilts also flag proprietary supply shapes and mounting brackets, so confirm the existing unit is a standard ATX part before ordering a replacement. If you would rather sidestep the problem entirely, we keep a list of GPUs that work with your existing power supply.

The upgrade that clears the bar: MSI Ventus 2X RTX 5050 OC

MSI GeForce RTX 5050 8G VENTUS 2X OC Graphics Board VD9272

$663.16

Buy the MSI Ventus 2X RTX 5050 OC on Amazon

Specs

What it does well

The frame buffer doubles to 8 GB of GDDR6. That single change is what stops the texture pop-in and the micro-stutter a 4 GB card produces when a game spills past its memory and starts pulling assets across the PCIe bus. It is the most noticeable part of this upgrade, more than the raw frame-rate number.

You also get hardware the GTX line never had. The 1650 has no RT cores and no tensor cores, so ray tracing was unavailable and DLSS was not an option at all. On the 5050 both exist, which matters for the growing set of titles that require hardware ray tracing to launch. MSI's Ventus is a two-fan, two-slot card, so it fits the cramped prebuilt cases this buyer usually owns.

What you give up

This is the slowest card in Nvidia's current desktop lineup, and TechPowerUp measured it a few percent behind the RTX 4060. It is the only 50-series part still on GDDR6 rather than GDDR7, on a narrow 128-bit bus. Eight gigabytes is the floor in 2026, not comfortable headroom, so you are fixing today's memory problem without much margin for the next few years.

Street pricing is the real objection. This card has been selling above its launch figure, which puts it uncomfortably close to parts that are meaningfully faster. That is the whole reason it is not our recommendation.

Who it's for

The 1080p player on a hard ceiling who needs the memory wall gone, wants to keep DLSS and the Nvidia feature set, and has an 8-pin already available. If you are not willing to stretch a rung, this is the honest choice.

The step-up worth the stretch: PowerColor Hellhound RX 9060 XT (16 GB)

PowerColor Hellhound AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB GDDR6

$786.08

Buy the PowerColor Hellhound RX 9060 XT on Amazon

Specs

What it does well

Around 40% more frame rate than the RTX 5050 in reviewer testing, which is the largest single jump available for a modest increase in spend. More to the point for this reader, it carries 16 GB instead of 8. After four years behind a 4 GB wall, the thing you want least is to buy a card whose memory retires it again.

It draws 160 W on one 8-pin connector, so the power conversation is identical to the 5050's. Nothing extra is required beyond what the 5050 already needed. If you would rather stay on the Nvidia side for the step-up, our read on whether an RTX 5060 is enough for 1080p covers that half of the decision.

What you give up

Ray tracing is the weaker half of RDNA 4 at this tier, and you trade DLSS for FSR. A long-time Nvidia owner notices both. If you do CUDA-dependent creative or compute work, this card is simply the wrong tool and the 5050 wins by default.

It is also a 2.5-slot card and physically longer than the 5050. Measure the clearance in your case before ordering, because OEM prebuilt enclosures are frequently too tight for it. If yours turns out to be, our compact cards for tight builds are the better starting point. One more trap worth naming: this card also ships in an 8 GB version under an almost identical product name, and it is easy to land on by mistake. Buying it would repeat the exact mistake this upgrade is meant to fix. Check the capacity on the listing before you check out.

Who it's for

The GTX 1650 owner who can stretch one rung and wants the upgrade to stay relevant, with case clearance confirmed and an 8-pin available. For most people reading this, that is the right call.

The part that unblocks the swap: be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 750W

be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 750W Power Supply, 80+ Gold, Cybenetics Platinum

$89.90

Buy the be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 750W on Amazon

Specs

What it does well

It carries up to four PCIe 6+2-pin connectors plus a native 12V-2x6, so it feeds either card today and whatever replaces them later. Being fully modular matters more than it sounds in a cramped OEM case, because you only install the cables the build actually uses. ATX 3.1 compliance handles the transient spikes that cheaper units mishandle, and the semi-passive 120 mm fan is a genuine acoustic improvement over a stock prebuilt supply.

What you give up

At 750 W this is more capacity than either card needs, so part of what you are paying for is headroom rather than performance today. It is also a second purchase stacked on top of the card, and that combined figure is exactly what makes the cheap-card route look worse the longer you think about it. Owners of OEM prebuilts have flagged proprietary supply shapes and bracket layouts, so a standard ATX unit will not always drop straight in.

Who it's for

Anyone whose current supply has no spare 8-pin PCIe cable, or who is running an OEM unit below the 550 W recommendation. Buy it before the card, not after.

Bottom line

If you own a GTX 1650 and play at 1080p, the upgrade is overdue. If you can stretch one rung, buy the PowerColor Hellhound RX 9060 XT with 16 GB. If you are locked to the Nvidia feature stack or to the lowest possible draw, buy the MSI Ventus 2X RTX 5050 OC and accept that you are buying the floor. If your supply has no spare PCIe cable, buy the be quiet! Pure Power 13 M first, because neither card runs without it. If you are on the same path from a slightly newer card, the GTX 1660 Super upgrade route and the RTX 3060 upgrade path land in much the same place. For the wider framework, see how to choose a GPU.

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