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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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Test Setup AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (courtesy of AMD) 2 GB PC3200 DDR memory at 2:3:2:7 Tyan Tomcat K8E (nForce 4 Ultra- courtesy of Tyan) 200 GB Maxtor SATA Hard Drive Toshiba DVD-ROM HDA/Auzentech X-Mystique Soundcard Windows XP Professional x64 Edition nForce 6.69 driver 7300 GS: Forceware 82.65 X1300: Catalyst 6.1 The X2 was clocked at 2.4 GHz with the memory running at 200 MHz DDR. While this is not exactly a budget system, I wanted to be able to push the video card to its limit and minimize any possible system bottlenecks. The NVIDIA control panel was set to Quality, and to my eyes it appeared as though the texture filtering bug that was reported on the G70 series of cards was not nearly as apparent.
We can see how similar the heatsinks are on the 7300 GS (top) and the GeForce 3 Ti 500 (bottom). Windows XP Professional x64 Thoughts NVIDIA’s driver sets for both the nForce 4 board and the GeForce 7300 GS were very good. The only issue I was able to find was with transparency AA not being used in the game even though it was enabled in the control panel. Regular anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering worked fine. All applications that I tried on this setup worked without a hitch, and performance seemed very good. Results 3D Mark 2005 This standard benchmark does a very good job in showing the strengths and weaknesses of the cards being tested.
We see that both cards are very evenly matched, even though the X1300 has double the ROPs over the 7300 GS. It is interesting to note that the lower memory bandwidth of the 7300 does not make much of a difference here. 3D Mark 2006 This brand new benchmark takes rendering complexity to a whole new level. On anything but a high end card, this benchmark is a virtual slideshow. As you will see with the results below, neither card tested provided a good experience!
The X1300 does take a small lead here, but neither card is a speed demon when it comes to 3D Mark 2006. When we are speaking of single digit framerates, even a half a frame per second is a statistically large improvement. The performance difference when using HDR is statistically large, and this could be a direct reflection of the X1300 having double the ROPS to handle FP16 duties. World of Warcraft WoW now appears to be the world’s most played MMORPG, and as such is designed to be played on a wide variety of systems. While it is a DX9 game, it is not nearly as complex and flashy as other products on the market. What is lost in pure technical rendering is gained by a massive world with a huge artistic investment. FRAPS was used to record a jaunt through the woods in Goldshire. The game was set to High Quality rendering with 4X AF and no AA.
In a big surprise the 7300 GS soundly beats the X1300 in WoW. 1024 x 768 was barely playable on the X1300, but it was much smoother on the 7300 GS. Apparently NVIDIA has paid a lot of attention to WoW performance here, and considering this might very well be the killer app for this type of card, the investment by NVIDIA here is well spent. Enabling anti-aliasing at even 1024 x 768 caused the framerates to drop well below 20, and made the game fairly unplayable. Resolutions higher than 1280 x 960 also caused performance to drop significantly. Doom 3 This now classic benchmark can still push modern video cards, and with more games coming out utilizing the Doom 3 engine it is still very relevant to today’s video cards. High quality rendering was enabled with 8X AF and no AA.
The 7300 GS provided slightly faster performance here, but two fps at either resolution is nothing to crow about. Still, both products provide a solid gaming experience when playing at 800 x 600, though 1024 x 768 proved to be too choppy for both cards in many areas during gameplay.
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Copyright 1999-2006 PenStar Systems, LLC. |
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