Add to Reddit
Introduction
Although most gamers were impressed with the capabilities of the GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7900 GT cards, not everyone can afford them. To cover both the middle and lower segments of the market, NVIDIA offers the GeForce 7600 and GeForce 7300 series of graphics cards.
As you can guess, the GeForce 7600 cards are targeted at the middle segment while the GeForce 7300 cards are entry-level cards. Yes, even those on a tight budget can have a taste of NVIDIA's new GeForce 7-series through the GeForce 7300 cards.
But just how fast are these entry-level cards? Are they even playable? We will find out soon enough as we will be testing a new GeForce 7300 GT-based card from Gainward - the Gainward BLISS 7300 GT PCX Golden Sample.
Please note that this is not a regular Gainward GeForce 7300 GT card. It's what they call a Golden Sample. Golden Sample cards are nothing more than overclocked cards that Gainward guarantees will still be as stable as regularly-clocked cards.
First though, let's take a look at how the GeForce 7300 GT compares against its predecessors.
GeForce 7300 GT |
GeForce 6200 |
GeForce FX 5200 |
|
| Architecture |
G73 |
NV44 |
NV34 |
| Manufacturing Process |
0.09 Micron |
0.11 Micron |
0.15 Micron |
| Transistor Count |
112 Million |
75 Million |
45 Million |
| DirectX Support |
9.0c |
9.0c |
9.0 |
| Interface |
PCIe |
AGP / PCIe |
AGP |
| Vertex Pipelines |
4 |
3 |
2 |
| Vertex
Shader Version |
3.0 |
3.0 |
2.0 |
| Pixel
/ Texture Pipelines |
8 x 1 |
4 x 1 |
4 x 1 |
| Pixel
Shader Version |
3.0 |
3.0 |
2.0 |
| Core
Speed |
350 - 575 MHz |
300 MHz |
250 MHz |
| Fill
Rate |
2,800 - 4,600 MTexels/s |
1,200 MTexels/s |
1,000 MTexels/s |
| Memory
Bus Width |
128-bits |
128-bits |
128-bits |
| Memory Type |
DDR II |
DDR |
DDR |
| Memory
Speed |
333 - 750 MHz |
276 MHz |
250 MHz |
| Memory Bandwidth |
10.67 - 24.00 GB/s |
8.83 GB/s |
8.00 GB/s |
On paper, the new GeForce 7300 GT seems very impressive. Even at the lowest clock speed, the GeForce 7300 GT had more than twice as much fillrate as its predecessor. So, this entry-level graphics card seems to bring with it a major boost in performance, quite unlike what we have seen moving from the GeForce FX 5200 to the GeForce 6200.
Specification And Features
Here are the Gainward BLISS 7300 GT PCX's specifications and features.
Architecture |
• G73 |
Process Technology |
• 90 nm |
Number of Transistors |
• 177 Million |
Die Size |
• NA |
Pixel Pipelines |
• 8 Pixel Pipelines |
ROPs |
• 8 ROPs - 8 colour, 8 blend |
Core Clock |
• 550 MHz |
Fillrate |
• 4.4 Gigapixels / sec. |
Memory Interface |
• 2-way 64-bits
memory interface |
Memory Buffer |
• 256 MB DDR2 |
Memory Clock |
• 650 MHz |
Memory Bandwidth |
• 20.8 GB/s |
Vertex Units |
• 4 Vertex Units |
Vertex Clock |
• 400 MHz |
Vertex Output |
• 400 million vertices / sec. |
Power Consumption |
• NA |
Graphics Bus |
• PCI Express |
Shader Model Version |
• SM 3.0 |
NVIDIA IntelliSample Technology |
• 4.0 |
NVIDIA SLI Technology |
• Yes |
NVIDIA Quad SLI Technology |
• Yes |
NVIDIA TurboCache Technology |
• Yes |
64-bit Texture Filtering and Blending |
• Yes |
DVI Support |
• Single dual-linked DVI, both integrated into the GPU |
Features |
• Microsoft®
DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support |
