eVGA GeForce 7300 GS Review, Page Five

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eVGA GeForce

7300 GS

A Big Step Up... for Some

by Josh Walrath

Overclocked Performance

While this is still a budget card, it does have the ability to overclock. The stock core is already at 550 MHz, and by using the auto overclocking feature 587 MHz was achieved. Anything over that did eventually cause lockups. The memory was able to clock from 600 MHz up to 684 MHz, which is a fairly significant jump. This allows the card to achieve a 5.47 GB/sec memory throughput. Even when overclocked the temperature on the chip never really exceeded 70 C, and the cooler never got hot. I re-ran several benchmarks to see how much of a realworld jump we would see with overclocking this card.

3D Mark 2005	Stock 550/600	OC 587/684
3D Marks	2024	2149
GT 1	9.3 fps	9.7 fps
GT 2	6.2 fps	6.6 fps
GT 3	9.2 fps	9.9 fps

In 3D 05 the overclock did not achieve much of an improvement. An extra 120 points is not bad, but it will not improve smoothness by any great degree.

3D Mark 06	Stock 550/600	OC 587/684
3D Marks	693	764
GT 1	1.536 fps	1.694 fps
GT 2	2.906 fps	3.180 fps
HDR 1	1.791 fps	1.999 fps
HDR 2	2.513 fps	2.820 fps

Again we don’t see much of an improvement with overclocking.

Doom 3	Stock 550/600	OC 587/684
800 x 600	39.3 fps	46.5 fps
1024 x 768	27.1 fps	31.8 fps

Here we actually see a bit more of a gain from the overclock. 7 fps is fairly significant at 800 x 600, and in more complex scenes and firefights that extra 7 fps average could make a big difference.

Here we see the 7300 GS right next to its primary competitor, the ATI X1300. The X1300 is a bit more complex, but the passive heatsink is a very nice feature.

Finally I wanted to see if this overclock would help out F.E.A.R. in any way, shape, or form. I retested the max quality settings, as well as enable auto detect for a new set of tests.

F.E.A.R. Average FPS	Stock 550/600	OC 587/684
800 x 600	17	20
1024 x 768	7	13
Auto Detect (800 x 600)	20	22

Overclocking does help a bit, but these results are still far from playable. Even going to auto detect the framerates really don’t go up all the much in average. Let’s see how it improved the minimum FPS.

F.E.A.R. Minimum FPS	Stock 550/600	OC 587/684
800 x 600	8	9
1024 x 768	4	7
Auto Detect (800 x 600)	10	12

Again we see a fairly minimal gain through overclocking, but the minimum at 1024 x 768 does almost double in this scenario. Auto detect does help out quite a bit here, and it makes the game somewhat playable even at 800 x 600. Firefights bring this card to its knees, and again if the user does want to play F.E.A.R., they really do need to invest in a higher end graphics card.

Next: Other Game Impressions and Conclusion

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