The EVGA 7300 GS: A New Quality Budget Card From NVIDIA
by Josh Venning on February 20, 2006 12:23 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Card
We've already taken a first look at NVIDIA's 7300 GS and you can read the article here. For this review, we will offer a brief recap of the card's features for reference, and look at some performance tests with our EVGA e-Geforce 7300 GS.
The GeForce 7300 GS was introduced by NVIDIA to take the place of the 6200 TurboCache on their budget end of graphics cards, and it does the job well, we've found. As the name implies, the 7300 GS is based on the GeForce 7 architecture, but it's been stripped down quite a bit.
There is a half-size version of the card which only has DVI and TV-out connections, but the EVGA 7300 GS that we have is full size and includes a VGA D-sub as well. The card is quite small and light, which makes sense given its budget classification. There are no external power connectors, and there is a very small fan on the GPU to keep it cool, with the EVGA logo in the center of it.
The 7300 GS also has 3 vertex and 4 pixel pipelines, the same as the 6200, but our EVGA 7300 GS has a larger memory size of 256 MB verses 16-64 MB of the 6200TC. Currently, SLI with this part is not supported, but we would be surprised if we don't see this feature enabled at some point later on. DVD decoding is another feature of this card, and it will likely include high definition video capabilities in future driver updates.
As we mentioned earlier, EVGA is a company with which we've had good experiences in the past, as their prices and warranty policy set them apart from the others. For those not familiar with their warranty policy, EVGA provides a lifetime warranty and will replace your card for any reason other than physical damage (this means damage due to things like power surges, and user-overclocking is covered). If you are looking for a 7300 GS, the EVGA version would be a good part to consider.
We've already taken a first look at NVIDIA's 7300 GS and you can read the article here. For this review, we will offer a brief recap of the card's features for reference, and look at some performance tests with our EVGA e-Geforce 7300 GS.
The GeForce 7300 GS was introduced by NVIDIA to take the place of the 6200 TurboCache on their budget end of graphics cards, and it does the job well, we've found. As the name implies, the 7300 GS is based on the GeForce 7 architecture, but it's been stripped down quite a bit.
There is a half-size version of the card which only has DVI and TV-out connections, but the EVGA 7300 GS that we have is full size and includes a VGA D-sub as well. The card is quite small and light, which makes sense given its budget classification. There are no external power connectors, and there is a very small fan on the GPU to keep it cool, with the EVGA logo in the center of it.
The 7300 GS also has 3 vertex and 4 pixel pipelines, the same as the 6200, but our EVGA 7300 GS has a larger memory size of 256 MB verses 16-64 MB of the 6200TC. Currently, SLI with this part is not supported, but we would be surprised if we don't see this feature enabled at some point later on. DVD decoding is another feature of this card, and it will likely include high definition video capabilities in future driver updates.
As we mentioned earlier, EVGA is a company with which we've had good experiences in the past, as their prices and warranty policy set them apart from the others. For those not familiar with their warranty policy, EVGA provides a lifetime warranty and will replace your card for any reason other than physical damage (this means damage due to things like power surges, and user-overclocking is covered). If you are looking for a 7300 GS, the EVGA version would be a good part to consider.
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Cerb - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
WAIT.So what is the x1300 performs better and costs less? I can get a 6200 for $50 or so, and will be able to do this with the 7300 in a few months (maybe sooner). Current buyers pay early adoption fees. It is, and always has been, this way.
Also, other reviews are showing it competitive with the x1300...
MrKaz - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
X1300 killed it with no problem.X1300 Pro would have even rise the difference.
Maybe the 7300GS is the slowest of all the 7300 models?
“Now that we've talked about the card, let's look at the performance. We've included a few other budget cards for comparison to get an idea of how the 7800 GS fits into the market”
Typo.
A554SS1N - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
"Maybe the 7300GS is the slowest of all the 7300 models? "Yeah, it is - GS is the same as vanilla, so 7300GS is supposed to fight X1300 vanilla not the pro - add to that the fact that this EVGA card may have slower memory than the reference, and it makes the 7300GS look bad, when it shouldn't. If it had the reference memory speeds, I'd expected a big leap in performance. At the speeds in this review, it is definately poor.
A554SS1N - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Is it possible to force card to use only it's own memory? I mean, if it were to have 128mb for example (I know this has 256mb), which is usually Ok, would it help performance if it was just set to use it's own memory (without the latencies of going out to system RAM) - and is it possible to manually set this?A554SS1N - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
I noticed that the memory speed given in the review was 350Mhz (700Mhz effective) rather than the reference 405Mhz (810Mhz effective), and the previous comment made about the EVGA card only being 533Mhz seems to back up the reason why the performance figures are lower than expected compared to other reviews I have seen - I mean, the card doesn;t really perform a great deal faster than the 6200TC for some strange reason, yet I've seen otehr reviews where a 7300GS is alot faster than the 6500 (which is in turn quite a bit faster than 6200TC), and equal with X1300...So the question is:- Is this partiuclar EVGA card a cheaper version with much lower memory than reference, and thus cards going at proper reference memory frequencies will be much more competetive. It's just that, with these performance figures, I wouldn't choose this card at all for a budget system, whereas something on par or better than X1300, which I was expecting, would have just about been Ok.
A554SS1N - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Update:From what I've found, the card with the cooler design on EVGA's site that is in Anandtech's review is the 533Mhz one (256mb). The other 256mb card is 650Mhz effective. Only the 128mb HDTV version has 810Mhz DDR2 http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=128-P...">Link
So, yeah, of course the card tested will be alot slower!!!! Can Anandtech include a full speed card in their review please! :)
coldpower27 - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Yes, that's why led me to beleive it's the model that I posted the link of, was the cooler design. I would like Anandtech's confirmation on this though.Rampage - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
i agree this is an unfair review.and IMO, it read sloppy from the get go.. this isnt what I expect from Anandtech.
coldpower27 - Monday, February 20, 2006 - link
What model of eVGA 7300 GS did you test, could you please give the model number.
Because it looks like you tested with this one:
http://evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=256-P2-N4...">http://evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=256-P2-N4...
Which has memory clocked at a pathetic 533MHZ, it's not a wonder that the X1300 defeat it so easily.
You are aware that the reference 128MB 7300GS has memory clocked at ~800MHZ/810MHZ which would easily help even the odds, given that on budget cards >128MB doesn't seem to do much if at all for performance.
DigitalDivine - Monday, February 20, 2006 - link
this review left a hole... for instance... the specification of the x1300...is it the hyper memory version or not?
if it isn't then the review isn't quite fair.