While many claim that, this is not the case. Otherwise it would have affected more players.
It may have coincided with the updates sure. But ultimately (and your own first posts states this) it doesn’t affect everyone or every setup the same.
While I have had issues with the removal of frame gen and its impact on the performance of using RT features, that is the only impacts I have encountered. Of course those won’t affect someone running a 1650.
I myself run an MSI entry-ish level gaming laptop. Features an 11th gen i5, 32GB of DDR4, NVMe 1TB SSD and SATA based 2TB SSD, and a 3050Ti.
That will run the game fairly well. I am not using the high res packs, no point since there is no 1440p+ display, and currently not using RT on it either. DLSS @ Balanced.
It is capped to 60FPS and plays fairly well. It is running a recent version of the driver, but not the latest version.
In comparison to my desktop, which is a few tiers above, both in CPU and GPU, but its running at full ultra, with DLSS @ DLAA, and most of the RT features enabled, carrying a solid 100FPS @ 1440p.
Any machine that is having issues can be resolved, as its 95% of the time a matter of getting the right settings configured. The other 5% is usually some sort of hardware issue. Even if its the only game causing it.
That all said, I know its frustrating when these things are going on.
You can review some suggestions I have posted here to see if there is anything you haven’t tried yet:
-Game crashing after Nvidia Update - #14 by DTMAce-1687
Instructions for some of them are here:
-Game freezing/crashing literally every 1-2 minutes. I can't play - #11 by DTMAce-1687