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| Gainward BLISS 7300GT PCX Golden Sample Graphics Card |
|
Its Golden Sample label means it's a factory-overclocked card. In fact, you can run it at 550MHz core and 650MHz memory right out of the box. Therefore, it isn't surprising that the card wasn't particularly overclockable. That could also be due to its passive cooler. While it helps Gainward cut the cost down, adding a fan would have significantly improved the heatsink's cooling performance and perhaps, allowed the GPU to overclock further. But the memory chips have certainly reached their limits. Rated at only 500MHz, we somehow managed to run them at 719MHz. That's 43.8% higher than what it's officially rated at! Overclocking the card further did yield some boost in performance, but they were generally rather lacklustre. Still, overclocked or otherwise, the BLISS 7300 GT PCX performed very well. We pitted it against the phenomenal NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT, which is a truly great mid-level card. Although the GeForce 7600 GT has twice as many pixel pipelines and pixel shaders, the BLISS 7300 GT actually managed to stay within 70-80% of its performance level! That's a very good showing from a budget-level card. Although many games were not really playable at 1600x1200, this card delivered smooth-as-silk graphics at 1280x1024. This is perfect since those who will actually buy these cards are unlikely to own monitors that can support 1600x1200 or greater. Its SLI performance was also good, allowing it to actually beat the GeForce 7600 GT by a significant margin in many cases. However, it would be cheaper to just buy a single GeForce 7600 GT, instead of two GeForce 7300 GT cards. If you are on a tight budget but want to enjoy 3D games, you will really love this card. It's cheap and fast! Unlike previous generations of entry-level cards from NVIDIA, this card is truly value for money. We love it so much we decided to award it our Editor's Choice Award! Congratulations, Gainward! For more details, read our Comprehensive Review! |
| MSRP |
• NA |
| Lowest PriceGrabber Price |
• NA |
| Review |
|
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 |
* Our New Review System
ARP is committed to developing new ways to improve your experience with us. As part of our continuous efforts to improve the value of our reviews to you, we are implementing a new review system.
This new review system is designed to allow you to quickly receive information on the latest hardware. This new system also allows you to quickly get the gist of the review without reading through it. This can be very useful, especially in situations where you need to make a quick purchase decision.
In this new system, we start with a Product Overview whenever a company sends us a press release about their latest product. We shift through extraneous PR-talk to create a straightforward summary of the product's features as well as its specifications. This allows you to quickly find out all the pertinent details about the product, without reading through official press releases.
When we receive the product for review, we will quickly take photos of it and create a Pictorial Review. The purpose of a pictorial review is to allow you, the reader, to quickly examine the product visually. It may help you make better purchase decisions, especially if you cannot wait for the full review.
After thorough testing, we will post a Comprehensive Review of the product. This adds on to the pictorial review with comprehensive test results and our final conclusion on the product.
But no matter whether you are reading a Pictorial Review or a Comprehensive Review, you can always read the summary of the review as well as examine the product's specifications right on the first page. In all our new reviews, we will maintain the first page as a Product Overview page. If the product is listed in PriceGrabber, you can also check out the lowest price online.
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