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eVGA GeForce 7300 GS |
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A Big Step Up... for Some |
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by Josh Walrath |
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The eVGA 7300 GS S-Video I wasn’t sure entirely what to expect when I was told I had the chance to review a 7300 GS from eVGA. eVGA has been around for quite some time, and they take a slightly different approach than the other North American based video card manufacturers. Unlike BFG and XFX, which have much more of an overclocker flair about them, eVGA works hard to build up a community of users by offering solid products at a good price. To build this community eVGA offers forums that are routinely visited by members of the eVGA team who quickly and effectively answer any problem or question these forum users have. They also offer a Step Up program which allows repeat customers to save money when upgrading their graphics card from one generation to the next.
Nothing terribly exciting to see except for a well built and designed card for the budget sector. This is not to say that eVGA does not support overclocking, as many of their products are overclocked out of the box and often offer unique cooling solutions. But the bottom line is that eVGA has a lineup of cards that are all well built with a two year warranty with registration. The 7300 GS S-Video is the second fastest card of its line, with a core clock of 550 MHz and 256 MB of GDDR-2 memory clocked at 266 MHz (533 MHz effective). The sample I received had the memory clocked at 300 MHz (600 MHz effective), which is usually reserved for the 7300 GS HDTV version. 533 MHz gives approximately 4.264 GB/sec of bandwidth, while 600 MHz gives 4.8 GB/sec of bandwidth. When using TurboCache the card can then theoretically utilize up to 6.4 GB/sec of main memory bandwidth through the 8 GB/sec bi-directional PEG slot. Of course in the real world the bandwidth is going to be less because the processor will be utilizing main memory as well, and the PEG slot works at 4 GB/sec upstream and downstream. Still, the G72 chip can probably utilize around 7 GB/sec of bandwidth in total. The card itself is of a very simple design with DVI, VGA, and S-Video outputs. The cooling is very reminiscent of the older GeForce 2 and GeForce 3 units, and as such does a good job at keeping the heat down while not causing unpleasant fan noise. The four pieces of GDDR-2 are left uncovered, but they stay cool to the touch even when overclocked. The card features eight very solid looking polymer based capacitors, so the chances of these capacitors leaking or blowing for the next ten years is incredibly unlikely. The card is well built overall, and it certainly does not seem cheap. The box the card comes in is very small, but attractive and beefy. The card is cushioned in a bubble wrap bag, and the box contains an S-Video cable, a single DVI to VGA adapter, and the installation CD. This card should not be mistaken for an enthusiast product, but for a budget package it is well fleshed out. It does not have any bundled software, and the cooling on it is decidedly barebones. Still, it is well built and should last the lifetime of the computer. Testing This card is still very new, and only this past week has NVIDIA officially released drivers that have supported this card on their website. I decided to also test how effective NVIDIA’s Windows XP 64 support is for this product, and I discovered a very interesting thing. Transparency anti-aliasing does not work in Windows 64 with the bundled 82.65 drivers that are included on the installation CD. I also tried the 83.91 drivers with this card and similar results. Transparency AA does work on the 32 bit versions of the driver. So for testing purposes, I did not have the ability to utilize transparency AA.
The eVGA 7300 GS sports a S-Video, DVI, and VGA plug. Multi-monitor is supported out of the box. The eVGA 7300 GS S-Video retails for around $85 US at this time, which lines it up perfectly with the Sapphire X1300 which retails around $84. The X1300 is a larger chip (approximately 100 mm square die size) and features a 128 bit memory controller. ATI does have its HyperMemory technology, but it is not implemented with this particular product. At first glance it would seem that the X1300 would have a performance advantage, but when we get into the benchmarks we will see that they are actually quite even.
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